ExhibitionSep 14, 2018-Mar 19, 2019

Tell the World about us

Black and white image of six women in Columbia in a room with multiple bunkbeds.
Photo: Rune Eraker

An Exhibition by Photographer Rune Eraker about lost liberty and human dignity.

In 2001, photographer Rune Eraker was in Colombia to document the conditions under which political prisoners were being held. In a moment when the guards were not looking, one of the prisoners managed to thrust a note through the bars of his cell and give it to Eraker. The note simply said: "Tell the world about us”.

17 years later, this plea resulted in an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

"The appeal from that prisoner in Colombia gnawed at me for many years. I have felt an urgent need to speak up about the people who are rotting in prisons all over the place, and who have been forgotten by an entire world."
Rune Eraker

Eraker travelled to 15 different countries over a number of years to take pictures for the exhibition. His imposing black & white portraits are accompanied by texts written by journalist Linda Hove Strand.

"People in these situations often have only one single hope: that the world knows and cares about them, and that their stories live on. It gives them a feeling that they still mean something and that they have not ceased to exist"
Rune Eraker
Photo: Rune Eraker
Photo: Rune Eraker
Photo: Rune Eraker