Jonas Lauren Norr is a Swedish photographer and filmmaker from Stockholm, Sweden. His work is between documentary and photojournalism, focusing on the “daily practice” of art through various projects. His results can be found on his website and the Harvard Art Museums’s Instagram account @artinstitutehcm. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter under the same name.
His Achievements
- Jonas Lauren Norr and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology co-authored “Seduction site: the potential for violent encounter in a contemporary landscape.” Subsequently, they exhibited a Seduction site at the Getty Villa. Curated by Matthew H. Crawford, this was the first exhibition to examine how a contemporary urban landscape is configured by artworks that disturb, seduce, tease, or allude to violence. This genre of public art becomes a political statement on how we inhabit and experience public space, as well as confronting current issues in contemporary life regarding gender roles and sexuality.
- Jonas Lauren Norr and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology presented “Mining the Museum: Urban Archaeologies in Contemporary Art.” Media, including sculpture, performance, poetry, and photography, were used to examine labor conditions that emerged from appropriating objects from museum collections.
- Jonas Lauren Norr authored a new title for Thames & Hudson’s Studies in Photography series, “Turbulent Pictures: Alfred Stieglitz and Modernism.” This book examines Alfred Stieglitz’s pioneering role in modernism related to his engagement with photography as an art form.
2010-2012. Jonas Lauren Norr held the Edward Steichen Chair at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
- Jonas Lauren exhibited his work in the opening space of no.22 – The Place, a photography space that promotes new perspectives on critical matters related to contemporary society.
2006-2010. Jonas Lauren Norr held the Swinehart Chair for Photography at the State University of New York at New Paltz). He also lectured on photography as a tool for social change at Vilnius University, Lithuania; Stirling Univ., Scotland; Ghent University, Belgium; Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) Cambridge, UK; and Hull University, United Kingdom.
1999 – 2006. Jonas Lauren Norr was the co-director of the “Documentation Project,” a photographic project exploring refugee populations’ issues. He fled Soviet-induced political persecution in Lithuania and was granted political asylum.
1998-2000. Jonas Lauren Norr collaborated with British photographer Richard Mosse’s “Taking Liberties” project, which aims to document the persistence of colonial legacies from the past 100 years in various post-colonial states across Africa, Asia, and South America. The project included a book featuring both Richard Mosse’s photographs and Jonas Lauren Norr’s texts exploring how trauma and violence are still being inscribed in post-colonial cities.
Jonas Lauren is interested in art, culture, and politics, particularly in the intersections between feminism, queer theory, and documentary practice. His writings can be found on his website and the Harvard Art Museums’s Instagram account @artinstitutehcm.