Modern photography: Hebe Robinson

by zenzaura

You know that I love this kind of imagery; shots that combine the new with the old, images that look back at past memories whilst also appreciating the present. As many of you also know, a lot of my own recent work within the last year has revolved around a similar concept as the images in this series titled ‘Echoes of Lofoten’ by Robinson. It is fantastic to see another practitioner using a similar approach to photo-montage with some spectacular results.

Hebe Robinson tells the story of hundreds of people who lived in the most isolated and rural areas of northern Norway after the Second World War. Focusing on one part in particular named Lofoten, Robinson brings to life the slightest snapshots  of a past way of living. In the 1950s the families from these areas were part of a scheme developed by the new Government to relocate the country into a more centralized form of being. This meant that the families literally had to pack up their things and move away from the coast and settle further inland. They promised as part of the agreement not to return their past locations. What Robinson has done is to gather old images from the coastal dwellings that documented that past way of life and with those has then integrated them back into how the current landscape looks.

The images that work best are the ones which so seamlessly change between the new and old, maybe down to a lot of lines being matched up in places where aspects of the landscape have barely changed in sixty years. I just find the effect of looking in through a photograph to the past to be such an interesting experience. The stunning ragged landscape looks like it was a terribly tough place to live, yet the lives were beautifully simple, full of hard work.

For a bit more back story on the subjects in the photos head here: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/hebe-robinson-echoes-of-lofoten#slide-1