"It is an honour to receive the first prize in the Danish National Research Foundation's photo competition 2024 with a photograph from my research project 'Revisited', which is based on long-term collaborations with indigenous peoples in central Australia, the Amazon, and Siberia. This particular award is important, as it recognizes the scientific potential of my photographic work. I am grateful for the jury's recognition and justification for the choice of my image, which is included in the forthcoming three-part monograph 'Revisited', which is expected to be published at the end of 2024," says Christian Vium, associate professor of anthropology at Aarhus University and visual artist.

On a daily basis, he is part of the Multimodal Anthropology Lab at the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University and is in charge of the research projects "Revisioning the African City" (Independent Research Fund Denmark 2024-2028), "North Atlantic Everyday Narratives" (Velux Foundation 2024-2027) and Tales of a Nomadic City" (Wenner-Gren, 2021-2024). In addition, Christian Vium is affiliated with the Film Studies Center at Harvard University 2023-2024 and part of CPH:LAB, thus participating in various creative, interdisciplinary partnerships across science, film, sound and photography.

Research with photographic memory
The picture, which Christian Vium has taken, and has now been awarded for, was photographed in a remote tributary of the Solimões River in the Amazon, close to the border between Brazil, Peru and Columbia. The photo is part of the research project REVISITED, where he follows in the footsteps of a number of photographers and scientists who have worked among indigenous peoples in Australia, the Amazon and Siberia in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.  

One of the photographers is the German Albert Frisch, who traveled to the Amazon in 1867 and took some of the first photographs of indigenous peoples. Photographs that Christian Vium has taken to the same area in the Amazon and reinterpreted with the descendants of the indigenous peoples portrayed in the old photographs.

About his winning picture, he says:

"The image of Celia, the girl in the water, is part of an extensive photographic work consisting of thousands of photographs I have made in connection with my research among indigenous peoples over the past decade, and is significant because it evokes a certain ambiguity that I am concerned with in my work. At the same time, it leans into a form of symbolism and iconography that is both recognizable and alien. In a way, it is both incredibly banal and very abstract as a motif, if you will. In my view, photographic images should not and cannot function as arguments in a scientific sense. Their quality lies precisely in the fact that they are open to interpretation, that they invite the viewer to let themselves be carried away and immerse themselves, perhaps reflect, in the motif."

Read more on the Danish National Research Foundation's website.

See more examples of Christian Vium's work here or here.

Contact

Christian Vium, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Mobile: 2980 2639
Mail:cvium@cas.au.dk