Leica Presents: Jacob Aue Sobol

Leica Camera will present this talk by Jacob Aue Sobol as he debuts his latest body of work Road of Bones as a special exhibition in Somerset House’s Navy Board Room during Photo London. This new collection incorporates poignant images captured in desolate locations, including the Kolyma Highway in Russia, known as the ‘road of bones’ for its notoriously dark and gruesome past where many Gulag prisoners fell during the period of Soviet repression, and where thousands of the victims’ skeletons still lie beneath the road. All images were shot with Leica M cameras, and are immediately recognisable thanks to Sobol’s individual shooting style and distinctive visual language.

Jacob Aue Sobol was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1976. After studying at the European Film College, Jacob was admitted to Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Documentary and Art Photography in 1998. There he developed a unique, expressive style of black and white photography, which he has since refined and further developed. His work has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, and his series about life in Guatemala won the First Prize Award, Daily Life Stories, World Press Photo 2006. In 2008, Sobol was honoured with the Leica European Publishers’ Award for his book, I, Tokyo. He then went on to work in Bangkok  and  Copenhagen,  and  has  exhibited  his  work  all  over  the  world. Sobol is a member of Magnum Photos.

Jacob will be discussing his work with Barry W Hughes, photographer, writer and editor. Since establishing the online platform SMBHmag in 2009, he has authored many features with leading contemporary photographers for international publications such as HOTSHOE and the British Journal of Photography. Hughes has delivered lectures and reviewed portfolios for a number of universities, festivals and institutions, while also working professionally in cultural communications.