Family immortalised: a tour with Samira Nawa and Mette Sandbye
The family photograph has a special meaning for politician Samira Nawa, who, together with photo expert Mette Sandbye, will talk about perpetuating, remembering and forgetting through pictures.
The tour starts in the library's permanent photo exhibition The Camera and Us, and especially in the room 'Family immortalised – Stiff smiles and cringing', where several of Samira Nawa's private family photos are included.
The family photographs are probably the most important photographs we have as private individuals. Many people point to family photo albums as the first thing they save if the home suddenly caught fire. At the same time, it can be something you want to get rid of if there is something or some people you want to forget.
It is not just in public that someone can be retouched out of photos: private photographs are also altered and cropped. If you then have some pictures to change.
Politician Samira Nawa's parents fled Afghanistan in 1986, and they did not take their family albums with them. Nawa has quite a few photos from her own childhood in Aalborg, but that is nothing compared to the many photos she herself has taken of her own family. At first she shared them on her private accounts on Facebook and Instagram, but as a politician she now also uses them on her public profiles. Look forward to a tour with Mette Sandbye in i.a. Nawa's collection of family photographs in the exhibition The Camera and Us.
Participants
Samira Nawa
Samira Nawa has been a Member of Parliament for Radikale Venstre in the Greater Copenhagen Constituency since 2019, and during that period has acted as i.a. finance spokesman, climate, energy and supply spokesman, equality spokesman, employment spokesman and deputy chairman of Radikale Venstre's parliamentary group. Samira Nawa, born 30 March 1988 in Aalborg, is the daughter of a civil engineer and PhD Bashir Ahmad Nawa and senior physician Mahbooba Speher Nawa, married to Naweed Amini, with whom she has children Zakarias and Sofia. All persons appearing in Nawa's family photographs.
Mette Sandbye
Mette Sandbye is professor at the Department of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, and since 1995 art critic at Weekendavisen. Her specialties are contemporary art and the history, theory and practice of photography. She has published several books, including Danish photography history, the first comprehensive presentation of the history of Danish photography, as well as books about time, memory and staging in photography.
