A Look Inside “Tom Sandberg: Photographs”

Join Aperture and Scandinavia House for an evening of conversation between writer and curator Bob Nickas, and editor of Aperture magazine, Michael Famighetti. 

Working in a signature modulating gray scale, the late Norwegian photographer Tom Sandberg spent decades rendering the world according to an exacting vision, training his eye on the shapes and forms of the everyday—dark abstractions of asphalt and sea, the hard edges of an automobile, an ominously curved tunnel, an anonymous figure casting a shadow—to plumb the nature of photographic seeing. His pictures are subtle yet transformative, studies of stillness that radiate mystery. A perfectionist in the darkroom, Sandberg was acutely sensitive to the rich spectrum of black and white, and his handmade prints, at times printed on aluminum and canvas, project a powerful physical presence. Although Sandberg is esteemed in his native Norway and throughout Scandinavia and Europe, his oeuvre is less known in the United States and other parts of the world. This monograph, Tom Sandberg: Photographs, produced in close collaboration with the Tom Sandberg Foundation in Oslo, is a long-overdue celebration of this distinguished artist. 

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Bob Nickas is a writer and curator based in New York. He has organized more than one hundred exhibitions since 1984, including, Tom Sandberg: Photographs 1989–2006. Among his other shows at MoMA PS1 are Wolfgang Tillmans: Freedom from the Known; Stephen Shore: American Surfaces; Lee Lozano: Drawn from Life, 1961–1971; William Gedney—Christopher Wool: Into the Night; a Peter Hujar survey; and projects with Charles Atlas, Trisha Donnelly, and Torbjørn Rødland. Nickas’s books include Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting (2009) and four collections of his writing and interviews: Live Free or Die (2000), Theft Is Vision (2008), The Dept. of Corrections (2015), and Komplaint Dept. (2018). Yesterworld, Nickas’ daily writing diary from 2019, has just been published by Karma. 

Michael Famighetti is editor of Aperture magazine. In 2013, he organized a relaunch and reconceptualization of the magazine, which won a 2018 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Together with guest editor Sarah Lewis, Michael is recipient of an ICP Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research for “Vision & Justice,” the Summer 2016 issue of Aperture. In addition to editing the magazine, Michael works with the digital team to shape online content, and commissions and edits books. He is currently also visiting critic at the University of Hartford’s MFA program, and a participant in the School of Visual Arts’s Mentors program. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Bookforum, and Aperture, among other publications. He is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and has been a guest reviewer and speaker at many international festivals and institutions. 

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This event is presented in partnership with Scandinavia House.

Image Credit: Tom Sandberg, Untitled, 2005