Sabine

Jacob Aue Sobol
Open Eye Gallery, Wood Street (26th May - 15th July 2006, Tue - Sat: 10.30am - 5.30pm)

Reviewed by Alicia Rose

It is only in the fullness of time and from the culmination of transitional emotions that a body of work of great meaning can be finally portrayed. ‘Sabine’ is this conscientious body of images now showing at the Open Eye Gallery in Wood Street. Danish photographer Jacob Aue Sobol is crafting a prolific future in his art by being studious to the point of inclusion, and his first exhibition in the UK documents, biographs and skilfully tells the tale of life and love in Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland.

In the making for more than two and a half years the collection depicts a plethora of human emotion along with both the cruelty and kind beauty of nature. There is the ambience of serenity, solace and wild abandonment in these images, with Sobol exhibiting not only the natives and their culture but his very own moral soul too. Sabine is the 19 year old Inuit girl with whom Jacob fell in love whilst travelling to Greenland at the tender age of 23, and his current airing of the images invites everyone to receive the intricacies of young love in such a harsh and bleak corner of the earth.

The pictures are in part explicit, detailing the young female ‘mensing’ and even ‘subtly whoaring’ her femininity with ripped tights and raised skirts, but ultimately it is the shape of love that is most apparent in this collective. Presented large and bold in black and white, all of the images are compelling viewing in the raw.