Exhibition. Galleri CFF
Mårten Lange: Ghost Witness
Mårten Lange
20221001 - 20221120
Ghost Witness is Mårten Lange’s account of China, a country rushing towards the future with the past in tow. Photographed in the six largest cities in the country, it depicts urban spaces that have expanded rapidly in recent years.
The exhibition is based on the photo book Ghost Witness, which was published in 2020 by Loose Joints and nominated for the Swedish Photo Book Prize in 2021. Following Lange’s long-standing fascination with ideas about utopia and dystopia, this is his most comprehensive work to date.
The work began during a three-month residency in Shanghai, where he discovered diffuse silhouettes of skyscrapers and industries hidden behind fog and smog during long walks. Everywhere, constant construction was taking place, clearing away the old to make way for the new.
– I was captivated by the ghostly atmosphere that arose both visually and in the clear eagerness to remove the past. The rapid pace in the pursuit of the Chinese dream and a capitalist ideal simultaneously gave a sense that the old had nevertheless remained to haunt the inhabitants. That is the atmosphere I have tried to capture in my photographs, says Mårten Lange.
Mårten Lange (*1984, Gothenburg, SE) studied photography at the University of Gothenburg and the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, UK. He has published several photo books and gained international attention with “Another Language” (MACK, London) in 2012. Since then, Lange has published two new series, “Citizen” (Études Books, Paris, 2015) and “The Mechanism” (MACK, London, 2018). His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at Foam in Amsterdam, Hamburger Kunsthalle, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Program and activities
October 30, 2–3 PM
Artist talk: Mårten Lange
Pelle Kronestedt, Director of Operations at Centrum för fotografi, will give an introduction to the exhibition, followed by an artist talk with Mårten Lange.
