Ursula Jernberg was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Whilst researching her family tree back in 2010, she uncovered her ancestral Norwegian roots. Intrigued by and excited about this discovery, she decided to travel to Norway in the summer of that same year. During this trip she developed an intrinsic fascination and love for the country and its culture; she has since come to feel the same for Scandinavia as a whole.
Ursula Jernberg studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (NL). Her photography aims to study the influence external factors have on the creation of one’s own identity. Her book Characters of Jante was self-published in 2012 and has been sold in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Today we share her series, Aurora.
AURORA
‘It presents me with a notion that life is real. A certain authenticity. When you are able to do what life asks of you, it requires a silence within yourself to be able to hear.’
It is said that once you have heard it, you will recognize it time and again. Silence. For some, amidst the cacophony of life, it is a pleasant sound. They seek it. Both around as well as within themselves. Sometimes it seems that the silence within can best be heard when the inner landscape echoes the outer. The people that live in ‘the forest’, as the inhabitants like to call it, shape life on the outside in accordance with what it sounds like from within.
For an entire summer Ursula Jernberg paid a weekly visit to the inhabitants of ‘the forest’, somewhere in Holland. Aurora is the start of a long-term project. The next step in her research will be aimed at penetrating the core of the freedom searching individual and his position within the community.
Ursula Jernberg is based in Amsterdam. She started her second big project, commissioned by DocuDenHaag, in the summer of 2015. The project, Aurora, will be exhibited as of September 2015 at Het Nutshuis in The Hague.
Aurora can be seen at Het Nutshuis in The Hague from September 4th up to and including October 16th 2015.
To see more of Ursula’s work, please visit her website.