Ann Cathrin Buchardt's 'Shadows of Summer': Norwegian Summer in Black and White

Norwegian photographer Ann Cathrin Buchardt is developing 'Shadows of Summer', a black-and-white photography project capturing the unsettling atmosphere of endless summer nights on Norway's southeastern coast. The project stems from the disorienting experience of the midnight sun, where daylight persists even at night. Buchardt, known for her subtractive approach, strips color from her images to dismantle the reassuring iconography of summer, revealing a strange quietness that hints at something unknown. Her work evokes a subdued unease, a premonition lurking beneath the perpetual light, akin to dark waters hiding silent depths. The photographs oscillate between two registers: nature—with low, threatening clouds, wind-blown grass, and water-polished stones—and human figures floating motionless in dark water or faces emerging from darkness with eyes looking elsewhere. These are presences rather than portraits, bodies that seem part of the landscape. Water recurs as a mirror, a threshold, a surface reflecting the sky, linking Buchardt to a Nordic visual tradition, such as Edvard Munch, where landscape is a projection of inner states. The project is ongoing, set in places where Buchardt has spent many summers, photographed over the years.