Artist Talk + porfolio review: Claus Rohland × Hannamari Welling

On Thursday, 7 May at 18.00, Juhan Kuusi Dokfoto Keskus will host an artist talk as part of Danish artist Claus Rohland’s exhibition “It is the traveller only who is foreign”. Rohland will be in conversation with Helsinki-based photographer, writer and editor Hannamari Welling.

The evening will focus on Claus Rohland’s work, artistic practice and creative process. Rohland will speak about his travels in the Middle East in the 1970s and the photographs he took in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Particular attention will be given to the later life of these images: how the diapositives, transformed over decades by humidity and storage conditions, underwent a kind of transformation and deconstruction, gaining a new life as works of art.

Hannamari Welling’s own practice is rooted in documentary photography, but focuses on the material and temporal life of the image: how photographs change through repetition, multiple scanning, erosion and fragmentation. In conversation with Rohland, she will raise questions about the evidentiary nature of photography, memory, and the transformation of images over time.

After the talk, there will be a portfolio review for photographers and artists. It is intended for those who would like to discuss a photography project, whether still in progress or already developed.

Advance registration is required for the portfolio review. Places are limited. Please send your expression of interest to toomas@dokfoto.ee.

The conversation will be held in English. Admission with an exhibition ticket. For members of the Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre’s Club, the entry is free.

Claus Rohland is an acclaimed Danish artist whose multifaceted practice moves between painting, photo-based works, and experimental art culture. His works are held in several important public collections, including the Designmuseum Danmark, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Rohland has received several grants and awards from the Danish Arts Foundation, including the van Gogh Prize, the August Schiøtt Prize, and the Europe Prize in Ostend.

Hannamari Welling is a Helsinki-based photographer, writer, and editor whose work focuses on long-term, intimate photographic projects. She is interested in photography as a layered surface in which time, memory and material processes become visible.