Agnieszka Sosnowska, För

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by Trespasser (here). Hardcover with tipped-in image (11 x 13.5 inches), 104 pages, with 47 tritone plates on uncoated paper. There are no texts or essays. Design by Cody Haltom. In an edition of 1500 copies. (Cover and spread shots below.)

Comments/Context: Agnieszka Sosnowska makes photographs that tell stories. Her images tell the story of her surroundings, charting her daily routines on the edges of rural Iceland and living in tune with nature. Born in Poland and raised in Boston, Sosnowska moved to Iceland almost twenty years ago. Photography, particularly self-portraiture, helped her to find an intimate bond with the place and its people, and to feel like she belongs. She teaches at an elementary school and lives on a farm in a remote rural area in the eastern part of the country. Living in an isolated location and in an unpredictable climate means building self-reliance (including replacing the roof, building a water source, and maintaining the land) but also being immersed and living with nature around her. Sosnowska uses a camera to make sense of her everyday life, and through photographs, she has documented her experience of settling in a foreign country and adopting a new culture. Her series was just published in a photobook; its title, För, is an Icelandic word that means journey, the act of traveling from one place to another, and the marks one leaves behind.

This photobook immediately stands out as a thoughtfully crafted object. It has a hardcover in a light gray cloth with a tipped-in photograph on the front that shows a young woman from the back leaning against a hay bale as she looks at the vast valley to her right. The artist’s name and the title appear in all caps on the spine. Considering the size of the book, it has a relatively small number of photographs. Inside, the images vary in their sizes and placement on the pages, but have a generous amount of white space around them. There are no page numbers or captions, directing our entire attention to the photographs.

Sosnowska’s photographs document life around her farm, the artist’s students, and herself, and their strength is found in their simplicity, stillness, and intimacy. The book opens with a photograph that portrays a wide field and a couple of trees in the foreground, their branches slightly leaning to the center, somewhat resembling curtains. The following spread pairs a close up photo of a couple (the artist and her husband) embracing in a tent, their faces obscured by hair, with an image depicting white laundry drying on the wires outside with a rocky hill in the background.

Sosnowska’s self-portraits are particularly striking. They are raw, vulnerable, but also authentic. In one photo, the artist is with her husband, he is behind her and his hand reaches inside her dress, she confidently looks into the camera while gently touching his hand. In another, she sits on a rock next to a young man, with the wide empty landscape behind them; both of them wear black and quietly stare at the camera, and we can almost feel the rough weather with blustery wind. A couple pages in, the tarp over a massive hill takes up most of the frame, and Sosnowska, in a traditional Icelandic sweater, leans on it, as if she is comforting a whale. 

Life with nature is a repeated theme that runs through the book. There are shots of a decomposing reindeer, a teenager extending her body in the water while keeping her eyes closed, and a girl on the ground with her head turned toward the sheep behind her. In yet another shot, a plastic bag floats over a watery surface dotted with cottongrass flowers. In Sosnowska’s photographs, the environment is more than just a setting – it is a dominant force.

För is steeped in compassion and love, and it ends on a note of gratitude. The very final photograph is a self-portrait of Sosnowska. In this medium sized image, she sits outside on a backless sofa in a relaxed pose, her arm placed on the tree that’s right behind her, looking confident and content. 

Sosnowska’s series brings to mind Holly Lynton’s photobook Bare Handed (reviewed here) which traces the rhythms and gestures of sustainable farming in America, where calm dedication places people and nature in closer equilibrium, and also Harrison Miller’s meditative portrait of East Tennessee in his self-published book Valleys (reviewed here). 

As an artistic project, För is lyrically beautiful, authentic, and intensely intimate. Sosnowska’s delicate black-and-white photographs, shot with a large format view camera, depict the land and its people with tenderness and care. The format of the book also encourages slow looking, simply immersing us in an arresting visual flow of powerful photographs. Over the years, Sosnowska has clearly built lasting relationships with the people in her pictures, and her photographs pay respect to their reliance and dedication. The book ultimately asks us to consider our own lives and the marks we leave behind. För is a solidly good and exciting photobook, and one of the most intimately memorable and comforting books published so far this year. 

Collector’s POV: Agnieszka Sosnowska represented by Vision Neil Folberg Gallery in Jerusalem (here). Her work has not yet found its way to the secondary markets, so gallery retail remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

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