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# Edvard Munch’s Little-Known, Highly Personal Photography
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/the-experimental-self-edvard-munch-scandinavia-house/
- Published: 2018-01-04T19:15:07.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:39:28.000Z
- Description: Munch's photographs exhibit an unfinished playfulness with technical manipulation and subject matter that is not as readily seen in his more well-known work.
- Author: Julia Friedman
- Tags: Art, Edvard Munch, Photography, Review, Scandinavia House, Self-portraiture, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/self-portrait-with-model-for-a-national-monument.jpg)

Edvard Munch, “Self-Portrait with Model for a National Monument, Kragerø” (1909-10), original gelatin silver contact print (image courtesy Munch Museum)

It’s hard to view the work in [*The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography*](http://www.scandinaviahouse.org/events/the-experimental-self/?ref=hyperallergic.com), an exhibition currently on view at Scandinavia House, in any sort of impartial way, to evaluate it separately from [Edvard Munch](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/edvard-munch/)’s more famous work. The photographs and film shown here are largely of interest because they were created by Munch, whose seminal 1893 painting “The Scream” is a prescient, enigmatic example of existential alienation, a theme much explored in 20th-century art.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/14--self-portrait-in-a-hat.jpg)

Edvard Munch, “Self-Portrait in a Hat in Profile Facing Right” (1930), original gelatin silver contact print (image courtesy Munch Museum)

New York is having a Munch moment. Happening concurrently to the Scandinavia House exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum’s [*Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed*](https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2017/edvard-munch?ref=hyperallergic.com)[ frames Munch’s career using his late work](https://hyperallergic.com/394219/why-edvard-munch-began-painting-portraits-of-the-soul/), particularly the painting “Self Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed” *(*1940–43), completed a year before he died. Many of the images in *The Experimental Self* are also self-portraits, although they exhibit an unfinished playfulness with technical manipulation and subject matter that is not as readily seen in Munch’s more well-known work. The artist often created photographic images of himself in multiples; for example, “Self-Portrait in a Hat in Profile Facing Right” (1930) is part of a group of similar works, each taken from a different angle.

In addition to a fascination with seriality, Munch’s photos demonstrate an interest in the spooky possibilities of photography — the use of technical manipulation to obscure rather than to capture verisimilitude. “Edvard Munch and Rosa Meissner in Warnemünde” (1907), one of a series, shows its subjects overexposed, concealing detail. In addition, the image is doubled, so that the ghosts of its subjects appear to be standing directly behind them.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/8--edvard-munch-and-rosa-meissner.jpg)

Edvard Munch,“Edvard Munch and Rosa Meissner in Warnemünde” (1907), original gelatin silver contact print(image courtesy Munch Museum)

The work in *Experimental Self* is most interesting when a photographic subject interacts more personally and directly with the camera. “Self-Portrait ‘à la Marat,’ Beside a Bathtub at Dr. Jacobson’s Clinic” (1908-09) is not only a tongue-in-cheek nod to Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting “The Death of Marat,” but is also a slightly grotesque half-nude of the artist staring into the camera, an allusion to physical violence that feels like a genuine moment of emotional insecurity. 

Not all of the images are probing or morose. The exhibition wall text interestingly brings up “the selfie,” and some of Munch’s works indeed have a vain and playful feeling that feels startlingly contemporary. In “Edvard Munch Posing Nude in Åsgårdstrand” (1903), the artist stands nude, sword in hand and hand on hip, a humorous spoof of European portraiture — here the royal subject has no clothes. In general, Munch seems more aware of the power of the camera to create a “self” than one might imagine an individual born in the mid-19th century to be. Every generation feels itself to be more self-aware than preceding generations of the transformative use of technology. It is refreshingly humbling to confront images that cause one to question that assumption.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/1--self-portrait-a-la-marat.jpg)

Edvard Munch, “Self-Portrait ‘à la Marat,’ Beside a Bathtub at Dr. Jacobson’s Clinic” (1908-09) (image courtesy Munch Museum)

*Experimental Self* certainly does not prove Munch to be a photographic or cinematic genius. (A short home movie, taken on a Pathé-Baby camera, seems a pretty standard piece of home amateur filmmaking; it explores how the film camera captures movement and perspective.) However, *Experimental Self* certainly humanizes Munch. It shows the artist both as a playful human being, and also demonstrates his work in a medium in which he was less facile. These works are not finished products — it should be mentioned that they were not exhibited during his lifetime —and as such pull back the curtain on a messier part of this artist’s creative process, a valuable exhibition end in and of itself.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/asf_lfredrickson_07.jpg)

Installation view of The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography at Scandinavia House 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/4--edvard-munch-posing-nude.jpg)

Edvard Munch, “Edvard Munch Posing Nude in Åsgårdstrand” (1903), original Collodion contact print(image courtesy Munch Museum)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/12/15--self-portrait-seated-before-watercolors.jpg)

Edvard Munch, “Self-Portrait Wearing Glasses and Seated Before Two Watercolors at Ekely” (ca. 1930), original Gelatin silver contact print (image courtesy Munch Museum)

[The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography](http://www.scandinaviahouse.org/events/the-experimental-self/?ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues at Scandinavia House (58 Park Ave, Midtown East, Manhattan) through March 5\.*