Publisher: Skeleton Key Press
Dimensions: 21 x 24 cm
“In his pictures, Øyvind Hjelmen manages to find the exact moment when something invisible becomes visible in what you see.”
— Jon Fosse
Øyvind Hjelmen’s limited edition monograph explores themes of home, travel, and memory through small yet resonant images
Øyvind Hjelmen's 30-year practice in photography-as any fortunate gallery director, book publisher, editor, critic, or friend can attest to-has been his presentation of an entire portfolio of photographs contained within a matchbox-sized container. Being Here, Hjelmen's fourth monograph, a clothbound limited edition of 360 signed and numbered copies, expands and recontextualizes this experience in book form. After opening with a poem by Nobel laureate Jon Fosse, the book takes readers on a visually poetic and interior journey of Hjelmen's enigmatic photography. The collection reflects a human desire or inclination (similar to photography itself) to leave a mark, to express "I was here" or "We were here," even if only momentarily. Like Hjelmen's portfolios, the expertly printed photographs in Being Here are reproduced small but reveal a surprising amount of clarity and possess a quiet resonance. As the open narrative unfolds page by page, evocative themes emerge: home, travel, awakening, abandonment, transcendence, wandering, loneliness, reflection, and memory. The book allows viewers to decode the layers and narratives while inevitably drawing their feelings, memories, and associations into the personal yet universal images. Being Here is a unique book that may be the most true-to-form expression of Hjelmen's photographic journey.
— Skeleton Key Press / Russell Joslin
Awarded Gold/Fine Art Book - Budapest International Foto Awards
Selected for the 2024 Books of the Year list - Alex Prior, Photobook Reviewer
“Øyvind Hjelmen is a photographer of the integrity of the gaze; the work [in Being Here] accomplishes the meeting of the poetic and the miniatures with their infinite spaces. A true archeology of words and things, these images are the eloquence of the world whose narrators Foucault praised.” —Xavier Soule, VU’ Galerie & Agence
“It takes a lot of boldness and talent to publish, so well, a book whose images are so small. [. . .] Being Here, by photographer Øyvind Hjelmen, could be a song of silence, a dream of peace, the dream of a discreet artistic gesture not wishing to disturb the order of things by its presence or its practice.” —Fabien Ribery, L’intervalle
“. . . In the aging wallpaper that has witnessed stories that have long escaped memory / In the familiar perfume of naked skin that invites a warming touch / In the presence of the same objects and places that ask nothing of us / In all of this, there remains something to be found, to be seen, and felt afresh / To be here is to accept and embrace, to cherish whilst we still have time to” —Alex Prior, Photobook Reviewer
“The images [in Øyvind Hjelmen’s Being Here] do not insist, do not hold—they let time breathe. A figure drifts in soft light, a hand lifts, a body turns away. Objects rest in their own quiet, their own certainty. Yet nothing is still. Even in silence, there is motion, something imperceptible passing between what is seen and what is felt.” —Andrea Copetti, founder of Tipi Bookshop
“It is [Øyvind Hjelmen’s] universe that he, the photographer, brings out of everyday life, using his mastery of light and knowledge of framing to freeze a very real moment and make it instantly so fragile that we can almost doubt its existence.” —Jean-Marie Wynants, Le Soir
“Øyvind Hjelmen has achieved something quite exceptional: his book and his photographs [. . .] are a respite from speed, noise, constraints, the incessant ticking of stopwatches and the hysteria of the day. It’s such a rare interlude, this suspension that feels like a deep breath, a meditative moment.” —Frédéric Martin, 5, Rue du
“. . . qualities are found in so many of Hjelmen’s photographs, where everyday motifs, stripped of action, become triggers that open up memories within ourselves, in the same way that the madeleine cake works in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. A curtain, a bed, a horse, a house, a boiled egg on a kitchen table. We are reminded of images we already carry within us, which we can fill with meaning or strip just the same.” —Sverre Følstad, NY TID
“Visual fragments tinged with a gentle melancholy, Øyvind Hjelmen’s photographs evoke suspended moments, reminiscences floating on the edge of the visible. His work questions the persistence of memory and the fragility of the moment, in a subtle balance between what remains and what fades.” — L’Œil de la Photographie
“In his pictures Øyvind Hjelmen manages to find the exact moment when something invisible becomes visible in what you see.” —Jon Fosse, Nobel laureate (Literature 2023)
“Hjelmen’s images, so full of quiet humanity and beauty, ultimately speak to disappearance and passing, the inevitability that all photographs depict. . . . These are moments tenuous and nebulous, precious in their transience and impermanence.” —Steve Harp, Photobook Journal
