The photographer
Iben Skov
Bergen, Norway. Photo by Marte Halvorsen.
About Iben
Fifteen years in pursuit of the Nordic light
Iben Skov was born in Trondheim to a Norwegian father and a Danish mother, and grew up moving between the fjords of western Norway and the flat coastal light of Jutland. That early oscillation between two distinct geographies gave her an unusually precise eye for the way weather and latitude transform a landscape. She picked up her first camera at seventeen, hiking alone above Trollstigen, and has spent the fifteen years since refining what began as pure instinct into a disciplined, deeply personal body of work.
Her practice centres on the extremes of Nordic light: the protracted blue dusk of winter, the relentless summer midnight sun, and the brief, violent transitions between seasons that the far north compresses into a matter of days. She works almost exclusively with available light and is known for returning to the same locations across multiple years, photographing the slow geological and meteorological changes that shorter visits miss entirely.
"I am not chasing the dramatic moment. I am waiting for the light to say something true about the land it falls on."
Her Lofoten series, shot over four consecutive winters, was featured in a six-page portfolio in National Geographic Nordic in 2021 and brought her work to an international audience for the first time. The images, made during the polar night when the sun never clears the horizon, use colour and tone to describe a kind of luminosity that standard daylight cannot produce. Critics noted an almost painterly stillness in the compositions, a quality Skov attributes to the silence of the landscape itself.
Skov is based in Bergen, where she teaches an annual masterclass in landscape photography and leads small-group expeditions to Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, and northern Iceland. She holds a degree in visual arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and has been awarded residencies in both Norway and Greenland. Her prints are held in private collections across Scandinavia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
She is currently working on a long-term project documenting the retreating glaciers of the Norwegian mainland. The project, begun in 2020, combines large-format landscape photography with archival survey images from the early twentieth century, placing glacial recession inside a human timeline. A monograph is planned for publication in 2026.
Awards & Exhibitions
- 2023
Nordic Photography Prize, Landscape Category
Scandinavian Photography Association
- 2022
Solo Exhibition: Where the Light Bends
Kunsthall Bergen, Norway
- 2021
Published Portfolio Feature
National Geographic Nordic, March issue
- 2019
Group Exhibition: Northern Margins
Fotografiska Stockholm
- 2018
Silver Award, Outdoor Photographer of the Year
International Outdoor Photography Awards
- 2016
Residency, Svalbard Artist Program
Arts Council Norway