Release, Samtal
Book Release: Charlotta Hammar’s “Unsheltered Island”
Welcome to the book release for Charlotta Hammar’s book Unsheltered Island. The project is an investigative artistic work about the phenomenon of the bomb shelter.
On May 3rd, we celebrate Charlotta Hammar’s new book Unsheltered Island (Blackbook Publications) at the Center for Photography.
Based on an email conversation with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) clarifying that there are no bomb shelters on the island where she lives, Charlotta Hammar begins a futile search for bomb shelters in her vicinity. At the same time, she makes recurring visits to the large bomb shelters seven stories below the university library in central Gothenburg, premises now used as a legal deposit library and which must be evacuated if the need for bomb shelters arises. In that case, up to half a million books must be moved in forty-eight hours, beautiful books from the sixteenth century together with telephone directories from the nineties. Meanwhile, on the island, large bomb shelters stand empty, boarded up as they were never intended for the public but were created for the military’s needs, who often practice out on the island. In her book, Charlotta presents images showing traces of the bomb shelters on the island that were once possible to visit. The book is the result of work carried out during 2023 with the support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
Charlotta Hammar (b. 1982) lives and works on the island of Styrsö in Gothenburg’s southern archipelago. She has an artistic master’s degree in photography from HDK-Valand and works with themes around existential anxiety and crisis management, both at the individual and societal level. She has exhibited at Värmland Museum, Borås Art Museum, GIBCA Extended, among others, and is currently featured in the exhibition “Here We Are Now” at Sven-Harry’s Art Museum.
The book release takes place at the Center for Photography, Bjurholmsplan 26 in Stockholm.
