Revision and the River

The artistic research project, “Revision and the River” explores acts of witnessing and revision in documentary arts practice focused on storytelling places of environmental change.

Within documentary photography exists a tradition of care for social and environmental concerns through bearing witness and storytelling. Despite the good intentions of environmentally concerned documentary photographers challenges related to representation of the subject remain. At the same time, documentary photographic practice and artifacts have been, and still are used in colonial and extractive ways in the subjugation of both people as well as the more-than-human world. Recently, terms such as “decolonizing photography” or “environmental rephotography” have emerged describing the work of engaging in acts of revision with archives and past narratives.

Further developing place-based methods active in documentary arts practice, this project focuses on a site of environmental change and energy extraction. Specifically, by focusing on the iconic Nämforsen rapids-turned-hydropower-plant along the Ångermanälven River in Northern Sweden as a site of collective memory and imaginary potential. Nämforsen, the site of one of Europe’s largest concentrations of petroglyphs, is situated by the village of Näsåker and in the wintering grounds of the Voernese Sameby reindeer herding community. It was the site of the first of forty-four hydropower dam installations on the Ångermanälven watershed imposing barriers to reindeer herding routes as well as to wild salmon’s critical migration journey. It remains a popular destination for those wishing to experience its summertime free-flowing turistvatten or “tourist-waters” and simultaneously a site of extractive industry. Through environmental rephotography, montage, sequencing and other acts of revisionist storytelling, this research explores place-based documentary-arts practice as a form bearing witness to- and reimagining- the image of Nämforsen.