Sunniva Hestenes: I’m the type who thrives best alone

what once was and what is

“I am the type who thrives best alone” is a personal project that tries to create a dialogue between two generations. The project started when Sunniva Hestenes came across the negatives of her father, and realized that she had unconsciously mirrored his work, over 30 years after he stopped photographing.

Half of the photographs she has produced in the period 2017-2019, the remaining photographs her father has produced in the period 1970-1976.

The works explore the beauty of the everyday. They wander between the observant, the calm, the almost timeless, and the brutally honest and confrontational. The intention of the project is to confuse the observer and make him question his own concept of time. The fact that one can not automatically see who has taken which pictures, and that they apparently have the same gaze creates an uncertainty about what once was and what is. This creates a dialogue between her father and her own photographs, between past and present, between two generations that may not be as different as one imagines.

– The vast majority will spend their first years sheltered from the past. Our parents have an important role in our development, and also have an enormous amount of power as their gaze and demeanor will be our starting point in all future social situations. We expect our parents to see us because they have chosen to create us, but it is also important to see our parents back, and acknowledge that they have lived a life before our time, says Sunniva and adds:

– This project is therefore a desire to say thank you, and to see my father and his dreams, experiences and stories for what they are, not just as something that has been.