Notes on A familiar feeling of now
Senay Berhe
Fotografiska, Stockholm
Through March 10, 2024
Senay Berhe, from the exhibition A familiar feeling of now, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2024
Visiting Senay Berhe’s exhibition at Fotografiska catapults us back to the year we started in 2013, and the rise of the snapshot-photography-legion of descendants of both Wolfgang Tillmans and Nan Goldin, in the wake of Instagram and the contiuned commonplace access to photographic devices. You will remember the fleeting moments, with a grungy twist of white bodies acting and frolicking before a mundane, but tender lens. The black body was largely and notably missing in view, and Senay Berhe’s images in Stockholm was one of the first times seeing that genre of image properly mirrored. Not that his images are marked by ”the gritty sweat" of the two icons mentioned, but rather a closer kin to the heightened natural romanticism of Vivian Sassen, or peers like Tyler Mitchell, Clifford Prince King and John Edmonds. In the compact black box space the exhibition succesfully reads thoroughly like a diorama; despite the breadth of the images, it substantiates the deceptive illusion of a near-hundred-percent and 360 degrees’ interconnection.
Senay Berhe, installation view of the exhibition A familiar feeling of now, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2024
Back to Tillmans; it’s also a comprehensive how-to-index of the conditions/possibilities (with an interest in defying any inherent limitations) of photography. Every possible technique; both in terms of the image itself and the mounting finds a home here. If you can think of it, it’s in here. Even installing brazenly on the fire exit door! Bold approach for something that could easily be overreaching, when found referential by those in the know, but the images collectively definitely handle it. Between some formal presentations stemming from trials of moving photography closer to either painting or sculpture, the artist has clearly kept busy stretching the confines of the limited space he has been afforded and the label of being merely a photographer. From here, it would make sense to ride more routinely with visual artist. At one point photography itself is so subdued that what's at hand appears rather an amalgam of painting and sculpture in nifty bent form, bringing to mind emerging painter and 2024 Fredrik Roos awardee Erik Uddén.
Senay Berhe, from the exhibition A familiar feeling of now, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2024
Senay Berhe, installation view of the exhibition A familiar feeling of now, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2024
As for the elasticity of the image motifs, the muted romantic air is seamlessly amped up several dramatic notches with a Caspar David Friedrich-esque natural cascade devoid of the human body that could as well make for a cinematic landscape still. At a closer inspection a few of the images will bring forth ”weighty” allusions that are there if you choose to emphasize them. A beautiful image of a little girl with cornrow braids, echoes ethnical history and sociocultural realities. The standout image however might very well be an image zooming in on a black man wearing a balaclava; a clothing item that in itself has an inherent sense of menace about it. But there’s really nothing menacing about this man and his disguised and seemingly softer facial disposition. What with the understated serenity, it would appear a representation of black male masculinity, rejecting common prejudicial stereotyping. And using a loaded garment for the rebuttal just magnifies its potency to catalyze proper (after)thought. It makes me think of an image by John Edmonds of three black males tenderly but platonically banding/bonding together with nothing on their upper-bodies, but all with silk durags on their heads that through pop culture have come to be associated with ”ghettoization”. That image; intentionally a softer representation of black masculinity, such that is also found in the work of Clifford Prince King today but in Western international art for audiences still make for a fairly ”novel notion”.
Senay Berhe, from the exhibition A familiar feeling of now, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2024
Arguably as often with Fotografiska the finishing of production isn’t always pristine but that’s on the venue in particular, not quite the artist, but the images definitely would have been more evocative in a light aerial space, playing on the inherent celestial qualities, then being ”boxed in” despite that too offering apparent intimate benefits. But here’s a star in the making whose work will surely put him up there among next generation’s seminal image-makers. This is just a luminary start - or actually continuation.
Note: Senay Berhe, with a long career behind the lens, is currently pursuing his BFA degree at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Ashik Zaman