Exhibitions – Werner Anderson

HUNGRY EYE FAIR Amsterdam 2026

“Who said Norway was a dark and cold place? Standing there with Werner, surrounded by his photographs, I saw nothing but light and warmth.

I was immediately drawn to his unique series Pilgrim, because of the unity of style and the palpable serenity that emanates from these delicate images, bathed in bright yellows, golds and painted surfaces. There is something remarkably peaceful about them.

The man himself is a true artist: quiet, charming, carefully weighing his words, and yet expressing so much through his photographs.”

— Nicolas Genty, photographer and fellow exhibitor

HÅP – Kragerø Faste Billedgalleri 2026

“She is going to die, Werner.”

The doctor at the hospital in Rwanda was certain. The little girl was so badly burned that she would not survive.

I photographed her for several days. She sat alone in a large white hospital bed without making a sound. She just looked quietly at me. Her face and body badly scarred by the burns.

Years later, I was standing on a street corner in Oslo, waiting for the light to turn green. Someone on the other side of the street was waving at me.

It was the Norwegian intensive care nurse from Rwanda.

We greeted each other, and then she pointed to a little girl beside her in a pink down jacket that was far too big for her.

“That’s Lorenza. The girl from Rwanda.”

The nurse had adopted her. Lorenza was alive and undergoing reconstructive surgery.

I was a young photographer when I went to Rwanda after the genocide. It was my first serious assignment.

Lorenza taught me something I have carried with me ever since:

You can actually make a difference to one person if you choose to.

When the Norwegian philosophy festival På Kanten chose HOPE as its theme in 2026, I returned to photographs from more than 30 years of documenting people in some of the world’s most difficult places.

I began taking them apart and putting them together again.

The result became HÅP.

Pilgrim – Gamle Aker Kirke, Oslo 2025

I wander and photograph in black and white. I carry my own mood into the landscape.
I return to the photographs with yellow and gold and work them into the images. On the larger works, I lay 23-karat gold leaf onto the surface by hand. As you move past, the light changes it.
The series was first shown here, in Oslo’s oldest standing building. The pilgrimage route to Trondheim passes just outside. I showed the works in the church room and crypt while daily prayers continued.

UNDER DAGEN – Stiftelsen Folldal Gruver 2025

“Even after I stopped working in the mine, I sometimes caught myself looking for my headlamp when I was outdoors. It stays in the body.”
— Former mine worker

From the mine entrance, you can see Rondane. Below ground, people spent their working days under dagen — beneath the day.
I spoke with former mine workers and carried their memories with me when I went underground to photograph. I also invited local young people to tell me what they imagined for the future and to draw some of their thoughts.
I framed my photographs in rusted steel, inspired by equipment around the closed mine.

UNDER DAGEN er støttet av:

SER DU DET NÅ

Vinkelplassen, Oslo 2024

Devoldfabrikken 2025

Ute i naturen, Sula 2026

“Often when people come up to me and say, ‘Poor you, being blind,’ I say, ‘Yes, but to me, being blind is just as natural as seeing is to you. I’ve never experienced anything else.’

I usually say that my hearing is my eyes. When I was little, I would say, ‘Shh, I’m seeing!’

There are actually many times when I’m glad to be blind. I don’t have to deal with all that pressure about how your body looks. I don’t have to see those terrible images of war flooding the internet and television. I don’t fall in love with the way someone looks when I know I can never have them.

Those are things I really appreciate not having to see.

But of course, I recently became an aunt. And that’s one of those moments when I sit there thinking, ‘Oh, a little bit of sight would be useful right now, so I could see that child.’

The baby is making a thousand faces and fooling around, and everyone is laughing themselves to death. How do you explain what a baby is doing with its facial expressions when I don’t have the visual experience to understand those expressions?”

HERBARIUM

After my father died, I found the herbarium he had made at school in the 1950s.

I remembered him mowing the grass at home. He would steer around the wildflowers and leave them standing for the insects.

The insects in my photographs have been preserved since the same decade. I bring them together with flowers in my studio, building the scenes through several layers of glass. During the long exposures, I draw with laser light while smoke moves through the scene. The insects have been still for more than seventy years, but in the photographs, some of them seem to be in flight.

Herbarium – Ringebu Prestegård 2025

Herbarium – Tinn Kunstforening 2024

Herbarium – Nes Kunstforening 2023

Herbarium – PopUp Drøbak 2023

SCAR

“The exhibition Scar is a remarkable example of how art can be used as a
means for asking critical questions and highlighting blind spots in the ongoing history-making
of the terror. The artist, Werner Anderson, has worked with the theme after thorough professional work
deepening and review of the facts, and not least, with great respect for those affected”

Lena Fahre, Director 22. juli-senteret Oslo/Norway

“SCAR challenges us to see invisible traces in the landscape, in the stories about the terrorist attack. How we relate to the difficult stories says a lot about a society’s values and self image.
Which parts of the past we lift into our time is not accidental. It’s human not to be able to being in the darkest room for too long. And July 22 is the darkest room. But it is necessary to do so at regular intervals. This project is such an occasion.”

Jørgen W. Frydnes, former Director at Utøya AS

Scar is a photographic exhibition featuring pictures of the two sites targeted in the terror attack of 22 July, taken by the artist Werner Anderson between 2016 and 2021.

The exhibition invites audiences to reflect on perspectives, proximity and distance, and on how we as individuals and as a society make choices about what we see when we approach this difficult story. What is it possible to understand, and what aspects of the terror attack do we wish to take on board? What remains concealed, what do we prefer to push to the side?

Scar is an art installation in two parts. The Utøya landscapes were photographed using a 360-degree camera and exposed on infrared film. The black and white photographs from the Government Quarter show fragmented details of twisted steel from the wreck of the car that carried the bomb. The terror attack in 2011 is the backdrop as well as the motif in both cases, but the perspectives and the points of view are different. In this way, the artist encourages audiences to continue asking new questions in the public conversation about 22 July.

Text by: Ana Rita Ferreira and Maja Gudim Burheim/ 22. juli-senteret

SCAR – ECC Venezia Biennal Art Exhibition 2022

SCAR exhibited in Palazzo Bembo, revolves around the idea of reflections, which embodies the dual meaning of a visible episode perceived by the eyes and a mental deed stemming from the action of thinking and pondering with the mind. As envisioned by the European Cultural Centre curator team, the act of reflecting carries the potential to foresee possibilities and the responsibility of imagining a better future.

Supported by:

ARCTIC MOOD

Multimedia Opening of Longyearbyen kulturhus in Svalbard 2011

We went there together more than once — Brynjar composing, me with my cameras.
The place seemed to hold several times at once: modern technology, the mines and the traces of those who had lived by hunting and trapping.

“As the composer of Arctic Mood, it was important for me to collaborate with a visual artist who could help support the work’s narrative. Werner Anderson’s working method made this possible and resulted in a holistic and detailed expression where the images and music merged seamlessly.”

— Brynjar Rasmussen, composer

NAKEN 2011

I wanted to bring two things together: the forms of a naked body and the rough, unpredictable look of a Polaroid.
After photographing, I cut the Polaroids apart and put them together again. I transferred the images onto watercolour paper, photographed them once more and enlarged them. At that size, the edges, dust and chemical marks became as visible as the skin.

OBSERVER 2009

When I travelled to Iceland, I brought years of work as an advertising and documentary photographer with me. I was used to making the subject clear.
There, I let go of that rule. I chose where the eye could find its way into a photograph and allowed other parts to remain indistinct. I did not need the landscape to tell me everything at once.
The series won gold in the Own Work category at Utsnitt, the Norwegian advertising photographers’ competition, in 2008.