Dan Young
is a pioneering figure in the recent history of Norwegian photography.
Together with Bob Robinson and Arild Kristo, he fonded Manité in 1962
and arranged modern international exhibitions in which Norwegian
photography was presented as a free artistic calling. One of Manités
principal goals was to advance photographers artistic freedom and
their creative independence from photo editors in the public press.
The model for Manité was Magnum, a cooperative of independent
international photographers that still exists.
Empathy, human involvement, humor, “straight” photographs of high
artistic quality, the exploitation of chance situations of universal
interest: these were Manité´s trademarks, and still remain valid
aesthetic values in Norwegian photography. Dan Young´s black-and-white
photographs from the 1960s and 70s reveal his great talent in this
artistic genre.
In recent times Dan Young has worked with large color photographs, a
development wich would appear to represent a departure from his
previous approach. To look more closely at his oeuvre, however, is to
recognize in his earlier black-and-white photographs the same formal,
aestheticising qualities found in his later efforts, and to observe in
the latter works the same human, empathic, and caught-in-the-moment
elements for which his earlier black-and-white pictures are celebrated.
And it is, perhaps, precisely this combination of apparently
contradictory attributes – the fusion of the human, accidental,
caught-in-the-moment quality with abstraction, formality, and
aestheticization – that is the chief distinguishing attribute of Dan
Young´s photography. Indeed, the works included in this book have been
selected with an eye to emphasizing this union of aesthetic formality
with the human and impulsive that characterizes Dan Young´s complex,
moving and beautiful pictorial universe.
Professor Einar Pertteson
University of Oslo |
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