“Was it a woman who cut off his ear?”: The wildlife and serene photography of Tom Sandberg | Photography

nThe road has never looked so wet as it does in the photos of the late Tom Sandberg. There are shots of spray, puddles, and asphalt splashes with the muzzle. A ripple of water appears to have a hole in it, a figure looms behind a rain-spotted window, and a gutter glows after the rain.

Captured either in bold lighting or with gentle tones of grey, they are images that have the power to make everyday life seem like a dream. But they’re also a joy, in a disconcerting way, like being told to dress for the sun even when the clouds are black.

Sandberg, as a new retrospective at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter next to the Oslo Fjord demonstrates, was not only Norway’s most popular photographer, he was pivotal in making the medium a serious art form in the Nordic region during the 1980s and 1990s. He was also a contradictory figure: hard-living, eccentric, and prone to stoking his own myth with tongue firmly in cheek—yet capable of producing meditative, soothing, and uplifting compositions.

“Tom Sandberg: A Vibrant World” covers four decades, from student works taken in the mid-1970s to photographs taken shortly before his death in 2014, and is Sandberg’s first major exhibition since his death at the age of 60. The setting is appropriate: Sandberg was previously an in-house photographer at Heine Onstad, where he captured art events in the galleries and created cropped, greatly enlarged monochrome portraits of visiting dignitaries, including composer John Cage. And the artist Christo. It is topographical in its examination of etched emery skin.

He was born in 1953 in the town of Narvik on the coast of northern Norway. The family then moved to Oslo, where Tom’s father worked as a photojournalist. “His father took him into the darkroom for the first time and exposed Tom’s hand on photographic paper. He said he was immediately fascinated by this chemical magic and never looked back,” recalls art historian Torun Levin, a long-time friend and trustee of the Tom Sandberg Foundation.

After his father abandoned the family, Sandberg helped his mother raise his sister in a tough suburb. In the mid-1970s, he studied photography at what is now Nottingham Trent University, where he studied under American photographer Minor White.

Sandberg considered the darkroom process, in which he experimented with materials and retouching, a pivotal part of image-making. As his practice progressed, his prints became larger, almost cinematic. The bustling interior of Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport lounge could be a Wim Wenders movie still.

He returned to Oslo in the late 1970s and began collaborating with printmakers and designers. Although he was interested in Zen-like compositions, his social life was far from monastic.

“Tom had tremendous social ability,” Levin says. “When he took a taxi, he would make friends with the taxi driver. He was friends with the Crown Princess of Norway.” “He had a great need and ability to have people around him. I think the turmoil is the dark side of that vitality. And that, to some extent, his work stopped that turmoil.”

Levin recalls how Sandberg had a special rapport with young photographers who sought to learn his “magical darkroom skills” and precise editing process, an ancient method of working that was precise, intuitive and slow. “We at the Foundation are very pleased that all 15-year-old students from high schools in the county surrounding the museum area will participate in a workshop inspired by the Henie Onstad exhibition,” says Levine. “Teenagers will be limited to one photo, rather than the usual overload of endless digital snapshots.”

Morten Andenes, Sandberg’s former assistant, photographer and co-curator (with Susan Östby Sather) of the Henie Onstad exhibition, remembers his wild moments as well as his productivity. “He was a wild spirit,” he says. “He was one of those people with a wry smile. He didn’t take himself too seriously, but he took his work seriously. That was the way he dealt with existential issues.” Andenas says Sandberg struggled with alcohol and drug abuse. “He would periodically go to gays.”

Sandberg told Andenæs that “if it weren’t for photography he probably would have gone to the hounds.” Rumors swirled around him. “If you look at his ear in pictures, part of it is missing,” says Andinis. “How did that happen? I think he liked to make up myths. Like, ‘Was it a woman who bit off his ear? That kind of thing.'” “He would tell interviewers it was a black-and-white dream.”

Although Sandberg’s obsessive methodology, poetic sensibility and concise subject matter suggest a contemporary lone wolf—his photographs often show solitary figures with their backs turned to the camera—he was no recluse. “Everyone who pulled him into his orbit saw it,” Andenes says. “He had a drive and an intuition that drove like a truck without brakes.”

His human subjects are actually studies of strange forms. In one of them, a man is shown dancing with his shadow. In the early 2000s, he photographed his young daughter Marie as a swirl of blonde hair. Shoot the human doodle.

“I don’t think he was one thing. He was a diverse person,” Mary, now 30 and managing her father’s estate for more than a decade, told me. “He was a very funny person with a charismatic personality. But he’s not always easy to be around.”

How was he as a father? “He was always very protective of me when I was a kid. We had many different classes too. I chose to live with him when he wasn’t having the best time of his life,” Mary says. She sees the photos he took of her as a form of self-portrait. “I think he saw a lot of himself in me.”

Mary remembers how her father would take his camera bag with him everywhere. “To go from our house to the tram, it could take between 10 minutes and two hours. He would take pictures of me, of the street, of the sky, of the earth. He only saw the moments he wanted to capture.” This connection with his subjects and surroundings extended to his friendships, as Morten Andenes recalls: “Being in his company felt like the sun was shining on you.”

There were some periods of intensity and sobriety. During his lifetime he saw much success, including a solo show at MoMA Ps1 in New York in 2007, and his legacy continues to grow. Henny Onstad has Sandberg’s works on loan from the Norwegian National Museum and the Tangen Collection, arguably the most important collection of Nordic photography in the world.

The exhibition includes just one photo of the man himself: a selfie taken in 2001, showing Sandberg sitting in an armchair in an empty room. He looks like a security guard. The man you won’t notice