The Shipping Forecast

Mark Power's ode to the BBC's iconic weather forecast program, "The Shipping Forecast." This year, the program celebrates one hundred years on the air, covering the waters of the North Atlantic around the British Isles. Over a period of four years, Power photographed these areas, searching for visual metaphors for the program's unique language and mantra-like radio delivery.

The Shipping Forecast Photographer: Mark Power Gallery: Fotografihuset www.fotografihuset.no

The result; 63 photographs, accompanied by texts describing the exact weather forecast for the location on the day they were taken.

Power's documentation of the 31 sea areas is both a poetic representation of the weather forecast and a record of how the climate dominates our existence. He has stated that the images in the project attempt to capture the unexplained elements he himself found in the radio broadcasts, and the encounter between his own imagined version of these places and the reality he discovered. Power's photobook The Shipping Forecast was published in 1996 and quickly became a cult classic. Last year, it was reissued in a revised and extended edition with over a hundred previously unpublished photographs (Gost Books 2023).

Mark Power (f.1959) har fotografert det sosio-politiske landskapet i det moderne Storbritannia i mer enn tre tiår. Bildene hans er en del av samlingene til flere store museer verden over, inkludert Victoria and Albert Museum og Centre Pompidou. Han er medlem av Magnum Photos og har vært professor i fotografi ved Fakultet for kunst og arkitektur ved University of Brighton.

As the full series is shown for the first time in Norway, it is fitting that The Shipping Forecast is exhibited in the country’s most weather-exposed gallery. Fifty photographs and texts fill the outdoor gallery, while the project room displays the complete series, accompanied by the sound work that accompanied the original exhibition in the 1990s. The opening will feature an artist talk and a guided tour of the exhibition with Mark Power in conversation with Chris Harrison. Harrison is a photographic artist, educator, and head of the photography department at Kristiania University College.

‍