Mette Tronvoll’s Svalbard Photographs

When the shutter clicks and light has passed through the lens and hit the emulsion of the film, the moment is history, it belongs to the past. But what makes me click the shutter? It is a constant hunt for finding the right moment when reality is so close to me and to my senses that it is worthwhile to take the photograph. This is one of the real challenges of photography, to be in a position in which reality speaks not only to my eyes but to all of my senses. It is sensational when that happens. And it is labor-intensive to get there.

A photograph is a document, a proof of a slice of reality. Another labor-intensive task is to put the various documents together, organize them and find their inherent qualities with the aim of expressing visual poetry. I went to Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard because I had already visited Greenland more than a decade before. I knew that the Arctic landscape and the people who inhabit it has a directness and immediacy that I connect with. The Inuits are close to the raw and unforgiving nature they live in, they are almost like a direct imprint of it. In Svalbard, it was the complete opposite. Everybody is from elsewhere, no one innate. Svalbard belongs to the polar bear. I like to photograph people and their work, while they work or in their environment of work. Portraits of nature are just as important in order to present their impact, the very essence of the place itself. 

In the photograph Svalbard #3, one sees a miner, standing, wearing his orange work wear and looking straight into the camera surrounded by the white winter landscape and snowy mountains behind him, near the coalmine called Gruve 7 in Longyearbyen. This is the last mine in Svalbard still operating, and, according to the Norwegian government, it will continue to operate until 2025.

In the photograph Svalbard #20, one sees a bunch of rusty barrels lying around in the landscape. A brownish open field and snowy mountains in the back of the picture plane informs a change of season, from winter to spring. The place, in midst of nature, and the rusty barrels are cultural heritage and therefore not allowed to be removed from where they were found. There is a fine line, and if I didn’t know it was cultural heritage, it might have been just rubbish.