Mutual
“Mutual is a series of 77 images, each one a collage of two photographs. A part of the collection has been shown before, hung on a wall in clear album pages, each image in the familiar size 10cmx15cm. Each album page has pockets for 4 images. The whole collection would be around 92cmx192cm. My grandmother, Lulla, had a ritual of collecting small albums in which she only kept images of couples. She kept them on her coffee table and showed her guests, together they would gossip about the subjects. The guests would become a part of albums as well, as long as they came in pairs.”

Berglind owes these albums since Lulla, her grandmother passed away 5 years ago. Her goal is to present them as a photography series produced by Lulla, however, the artist admits that it never felt right towards the people in the pictures since the connection or trust they shared towards her grandmother would be broken. The project became clear after reading Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water by Astrida Neimanis. The author writes: 

As watery we experience ourselves less as isolated entities and more as oceanic eddies… the space between ourselves and others is at once as distant as the primeval sea, yet closer than our own skin – the traces of those same oceanic beginnings still cycling through us, pausing as this bodily thing we call “mine”.

The water in Berglind’s images translates to the world of emotions people share with their most intimate partners. Trust is a feeling and emotions are constantly flowing, therefore people we trust come and go. Tides change, partners split up, pass away, bond again and the cycle continues. In most cases covering people’s faces makes them not only anonymous but can also strip them of age, the color of their skin, gender and sexuality. What is left is the body language of people who have chosen one another.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Berglind Hreiðarsdóttir (b.1994, Selfoss) is a visual artist from Iceland who is researching her own connections to the photograph. The artist completed her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Icelandic University of the Arts in 2018. Later that year she became one of the co-creators of studio B6, a space in Reykjavik that serves for events, exhibitions and working artists. Berglind is currently participating in a collaborative project with Rhona Ewe Clews through the Arts Territory Exchange. In early 2020 she moved to Malmö, Sweden from where she continues to pursue her artistic career.