Terje Abusdal

Sunday night, memory fragments from animal planet. A gazelle being ripped apart in slow motion by a pack of hyenas. Soothing to watch as the weekend comes to an end, and existential anxiety is at its peak. The comforting assurance of knowing that nature will always take its course. Of having no choice – but to accept, and let go.

Hope Blinds Reason is a visual narrative from a series of journeys made in India along the river Ganga, from its source in the Himalayas to its delta in the Bay of Bengal. It is a story about an attempt to come to terms with one of the most elementary of human experiences, love and loss.

Published by Journal, Stockholm, 2019

23 x 30,5 cm. 72 pages. 35 color images. English.

Soft cover with red transparent plastic dust jacket.

Essay by Aveek Sen.

Winner of Norway’s Most Beautiful Book 2020, and gold in category Artists’ Books.

Finnskogen – directly translated as The Forest of the Finns – is a large, contiguous forest belt along the Norwegian-Swedish border, where farming families from Finland settled in the early 1600s. The immigrants – called Forest Finns – were slash-and-burn farmers. This ancient agricultural method yielded bountiful crops but required large areas of land as the soil was quickly exhausted. Population growth eventually led to a scarcity of resources in their native Finland and, fuelled by famine and war, forced a wave of migration in search for new territories.

The Forest Finns’ understanding of nature was rooted in an eastern shamanistic tradition, and they are often associated with magic and mystery. Rituals, spells and symbols were used as a practical tool in daily life; that could heal and protect, or safeguard against evil.

This photographic project draws on these beliefs while investigating what it means to be a Forest Finn today, in a time when the 17th century way of life is long gone, and their language is no longer spoken.

Published by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg Berlin, Germany, 2018

19,2 x 24 cm. 180 pages. 96 color and b/w ills. English.

Essays by Aaron Schuman and Birger Nesholen.

Winner of Leica Oskar Barnack Award and Nordic Dummy Award in 2017. Finalist at the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award 2017, at Unseen Dummy Award 2017 and Alec Soth’s Juror’s Pick at the Magnum Photography Awards, among others.

“After his wife died in 1977, Tomas moved in with us. Shortly after his arrival, he packed his bags again to go abroad for the first time. All his life he had dreamt of travelling.”

Costa Bravo Holiday Paradise is a picture-biography made from the travel albums of Norwegian rural farmer and small-scale miner, Tomas Mølland, who at the ripe age of 75 set out to explore the world beyond his village. The story of Tomas’ feats is recounted by his maternal grandson Terje Abusdal, some three decades after his passing.

The book is a standalone sequel to Terje Abusdal's sold out Radius 500 Metres from 2015, where the photos were taken by his paternal grandfather Åsmund Abusdal.

Published by Journal, Stockholm, 2024

15 x 21 cm. 144 pages. 74 color images. English and Norwegian.

Text by Terje Abusdal.

Radius 500 Metres is a photobook made from the archives of Åsmund Abusdal, told by his grandson Terje Abusdal. Portrayed through a series of personal photos from the Setesdal Valley, the book offers glimpses of everyday life in rural Norway in the 1970s and 80s. A time before wealth of the oil industry transformed the country and way of life forever. In that way, Radius 500 Metres is a visual testimony from a period that marked the end for the post-war social democratic welfare model and the shift to neoliberalism.

Åsmund Abusdal was a self-proclaimed journalist and photographer. Many of the pictures, accompanied by stories he wrote, were published in the local newspaper, Setesdølen. The photographs are spontaneous – wonderful examples of the snapshot-aesthetics that had its golden age around the same time these were taken. They are unintended historical documents and Norwegian contributions to a glorious era of colour photography.

Published by Journal, Stockholm, 2015

15 x 21 cm. 96 pages. 71 color images. English and Norwegian.

Text by Terje Abusdal.

Sold out.