Sølve Sundsbø
Biography
Sølve Sundsbø is a photographer from Norway but moved to London to study photography at the London College of Printing. However in the 1990s, he left college to work as first assistant to British photographer Nick Knight. Since then he has established himeself within the fashion industry and regularly works with publications such as Italian Vogue, Love, Visionaire, V, Interview, i-D, NYTimes, Chinese Vogue, Vogue Nippon and W Magazine.
Sundsbø believes he got is beginnings in photography at an early age stating, “I was walking home from school in Norway as a very young boy, probably about 11 years of age, and there was a bush absolutely covered in really fine ice and the light was shining from behind it. It looked incredible. I thought, ‘Wow, I need to know how to photograph that.’ I wanted to keep that moment because it was so special.” A little over thirty years after that childhood encounter, Sundsbø is couched in a freshly revamped studio just off London’s Hoxton Square, populated by his own team and housing, among other things, a temperature controlled room for his hard-drive and a neatly catalogued (and vast) archive of labelled grey boxes. Landing in London in the early 1990s, after McDean encouraged him to move, Sundsbø fell in with the right crowd. After a few months on a photography course, McDean scored the young Norwegian a job as Knight’s assistant and the pair worked together for almost four years.
Style
Despite the diversity of his work, there are threads that run through Sundsbø’s oeuvre: an extraordinary use of lighting, an engagement with technology, a high level of precision, and a taste for fantasy. He is mainly interested in Fashion and beauty shots and incorporates extraordinary use of movement and texture into his works. It is difficult to pinpoint an exact style of Sundsbø’s other than that it is otherworldly. And there is a reason for this; the problem was that curiosity had got the better of the young Norwegian and he couldn't help but embrace every photographic technique going. His work incorporated everything from X-rays and 3-D scanning to hi-tech manipulation and laborious hand-painted retouching. "If I've got a style," says Sundsbø, "it's that I've got no style."
Often Sundsbø’s work is described as futuristic and ethereal. Some of Sundsbø’s most surreal and digital-looking work is achieved through the interplay of traditional photography and technology — or simply through the sophisticated manipulation of lighting or painting directly onto prints. In images such as the one at the top right of this page, he uses moving lights to create electronic feel.
His mastery of light and moment is what grately inspires me in regards to his work. Also the fact that I feel as though I identify with him when he says that his only style is that he doesn't have one, as I feel this is important for photographers in order to refine their style and skills.
Corner, L. (2018). Solve Sundsbo: His bizarre, cleverly manipulated images have made him. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/solve-sundsbo-his-bizarre-cleverly-manipulated-images-have-made-him-fashion-photographys-hottest-new-776508.html [Accessed 27 Mar. 2018].
The Business of Fashion. (2018). Sølve Sundsbø, Photographer. [online] Available at: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/creative-class/creative-class-solve-sundsbo-photographer [Accessed 27 Mar. 2018].