Morten Gåsvand

Country: Norway 🇳🇴

Morten Gåsvand is an independent documentary photographer based close to the Norwegian city of Trondheim. For more than three decades, Morten has travelled the world documenting the mystery of reality, seeking out unexpected coincidences, unplanned moments that have become the cornerstone of his cinematic style of photography. Morten’s expansive portfolio of images juxtaposes collections of landscape work taken in and around the Norwegian countryside close to the rural hotel he runs with his family alongside street photography and photojournalism images captured during his many and varied travels.

Rarely setting out with a preconceived idea of the images he is looking for while on location, Morten prefers to be led by events, an approach that allows him to gain more personal insight into the lives of the subjects of his work. “Wherever I go, I am on the lookout for visual contrasts to use in my work,” Morten says. “Out in the world, I search for subjects that I cannot find at home. At home, I walk endlessly to capture silent trees and remote landscapes. I love the contrast between my life in quiet Norway and the busy urban streets around the world.”

Since setting out on the first of his overseas photography expeditions with rolls of Kodachrome films in the mid-1980s, Morten has produced a powerful series of stories and collections dealing with life, society and politics in countries including Turkey, China, the US, India, Nepal and Mongolia. Over the years, Morton has worked in more than 100 different countries, documenting the lead-up to the first democratic election of a Turkish President in the history of the republic, the vast, open spaces of Tiananmen Square as China opened itself up to foreign investment in the late-1980s, and the extraordinary scenes that unfolded in Ukraine during the Euromaidan Revolution.

Throughout this time, Morten has built up an outstanding collection of images that document the ancient mountain range that surrounds his home in Norway. The area is partly made up of protected woodland and is home to some of the Scandinavian country’s earliest native pine trees. The Trollheimen range is believed to be one of the first areas in Norway where the ice melted at the end of the last ice age. This is where Morten’s interest in photography began.