Scenes from an Island

This collection of photographs and texts was created between 2014 and 2024, during various stays at the Ingmar Bergman Estate on the Swedish island of Fårö. Divided into three acts, the series examines the vulnerability of humankind and nature, as reflected in the climate crisis and global conflicts. Set against the dramatic island landscape, which already served Bergman as a source of inspiration and a backdrop for his films, islanders, and refugees become protagonists in a photographic reflection on the existential issues of our time.

“I staged scenarios; sans figures and with figures transitioning through the frame, to explore transience and the elemental conditions of landscape — bodies contrasted with the desolate topography — the mountains, the earth, the water, and the air.”

In a society where secularism and individualism rule, the relationship to nature is almost religious as a way of finding connection. A part of the work was exhibited at Fotografiska New York, Bergmancenter, Sweden, and at the National Museum of Finland. 

SPIRIT & FLESH MAGAZINE | INTERVIEW SCANDINAVIA STANDARD  | INTERVIEW L’OIEIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE  | ART REVIEW | ARTICLE L’OIEIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE | SWEDISH RADIO INTERVIEW  | INTERVIEW KULTURÖJN  | PRESS RELEASE (USA) | PRESS RELEASE (FIN) | PRESS RELEASE (SWE) | MUSEE MAGAZINE | SOUND

 
 
 
 

America Series

In the same tradition as photographers in decades past — Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Richard Avedon — my intention is to share a different point of view on the current face of America: as a woman and an immigrant. I made two cross-country trips on a route influenced by America’s historic migration — one of hopes, dreams, and opportunities. Using an electric vehicle as a mobile portrait studio, I photographed people from all walks of life, at charging stations, hotels, restaurants, and everywhere along the way.

Against a backdrop of man-made urban landscapes, strip malls, endless parking lots, fast food chains, and billboards urging people to consume more, I saw the economic difference between Americans that have, and Americans that have not. “The great divide” we hear about in media and politics may be real, but this experience also points to how each meeting reveals that there is more connecting us than dividing us. Published by Damiani Books in collaboration with creative director Anders Weinar.

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The Guardian | i-D Magazine | Huck Magazine | L’Oeil de la Photographie | All about Photo Magazine | L’Oeil de la Photographie | Polestar Article | Lenscratch | Press Release | Press Images |

 
 
 
 
 
 

It happens in the meeting

The 2015 refugee crisis affected the Swedish Fårö island and its communities, offering an opportunity for connection. Together with people from Syria and Afghanistan, along with local- and principal dancers from the Stockholm Royal Opera, the themes of home, fear and identity were explored through movement. The project was produced and directed by Florence Montmare in collaboration with choreographer Joakim Stephenson, designer Marie Bergman, composer Hugo Therkelson and Sara Sjöö in partnership with Bergmancenter, the Bergman Estate, and Film Gotland. 

 

Missed Connections

 
 
“Where does the gaze come from?”

In an echo of silent conversations between three generations of image makers — Anna Hoffman Uddgren (1868-1947), Marta Berglund (1893-1973), and Florence Montmare, Missed Connections explores notions of time transparency as a biographical and geographical journey linking personal and collective histories. Through a camera obscura, the train becomes an "eye in motion" that observes the present, soon to be the past. In two adjacent train cars, the work explores time transparency and synchronicity.

A collaboration with Angelica Blomhage, Gotland Museum/Konstmuseum, and Birthe Jorgensen, Gotland Konstfrämjandet/Gotland Trains, Sweden.

Press (Swedish)

“Topography, biography, geography... movement is the eye”
— Florence Montmare
 
 

Dream Machine

The complexities of dreams are explored through ritual in ”Dream Machine”. The performance was created at Big Sky Works, New York, with the audience participating with their dreams as tickets. In the piece, dreams are deconstructed and performed by a circus troupe; Ambrose Martos, Tanya Gagne, Aiden O’Shea, Suzanne Rogaleski, and Anush Mirbegian. Dream Machine was a collaboration with artist Sara Brown.

 
 
 
 

Illuminations

In 2002 my relationship was slowly falling apart. As a way of documenting our last days together, I started making one photograph every night. The camera shutter was left open for 3 to 8 hours every night in front of our bed in a darkened bedroom, and as the beginning morning light arrived the exposure was interrupted. It is an intimate journal, documenting time and memory, where the present meets the past.  

A multi-sensory experience of the relationship and its demise [New York Post]

A view from the foot of her bed, the most intimate place you can find suddenly becomes universal [Posture Magazine]

Florence Montmare took that experience and turned it on its head ... incredibly beautiful and, dare we say it, quite poignant. [TimeOut New York]

PRESS RELEASE | TimeOut New York   |   Posture Magazine   

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Phantasme

Desire turns into decay in Phantasme, a series of monochromatic video paintings. Exploring the boundaries of painting, sculpture, performance, and advertising, Montmare & Åberg embody excessive consumption hysteria in a palette of white, black, red, and pink.

Using food and cosmetic products to paint and sculpt, the characters investigate female identity and concepts of beauty as they are transformed into phantoms of desire. Phantasme has been exhibited internationally at Saarlandmuseum, Centre d’art Contemporain du Luxembourg, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in Belgium, FRAC Lorraine in France, and Färgfabriken Sweden, among other places.

 
 

Marta’s Atelier

 

Detail by Marta Berglund, Riksarkivet Visby

 
“Crucial pieces are missing in history — women have disappeared, or remain forgotten in the archives.”
 
 

By coincidence, Florence Montmare discovers that she is directly related to one of Gotland's most prolific female photographers — Marta Berglund (1892-1973). An interactive installation about memory and representation, the exhibition explores photography in the past and present. The exhibition includes prints, video projections, text, objects, and archive materials. Designed as a research lab, the artist invites the public to participate in the process of discovering Berglund, contribute with facts and photos, and be photographed in front of her recreated backdrop.

Women remain forgotten in history, and there is a lack of source material for the 20th century. Collaborating with the National Swedish Archive, the artist attempts to remedy this, while also posing the question: “How do you archive yourself for an unknown future?”

Press (Swedish)

 
 
“How do you archive yourself for an unknown future?”
 
 
 
 

KRIΣ / return to surrender

To contemplate connection to source is to contemplate impermanence; a sense of longing for coexistence with nature, to return to an authentic home, to solace and peace. With a nocturnal theme, this is an ongoing exploration of metaphors of transience, and circularity of nature. Throughout the passages between new and full moon, dusk and dawn, I spent entire nights sheltered by an ancient olive grove in my father’s homeland Crete, Greece. I gathered light through singular night-long exposures and compressed time into the two-dimensional frame. The advent of the morning light acts as an agent of exposition and interruption. Through the nightly ritual the body in the cocoon dissolves and re-materializes, all while the ancient grove remains fixed. The work is an inquiry into understanding ‘self as nature’, with the earth as the source. Painting with light, time, and space merges, rendering luminous, mysterious palettes that evoke the ambiguity of the physical and the subliminal.