Lars Idar Waage

Bio

After 15 years as a photojournalist, Lars Idar Waage had to leave the industry right after his major photo project had started. For nearly ten years, he has been progressing the photo projects "A Different Stavanger" and "A Dying Norway - in a Living America?" and finished the photography in 2024. In the last half of 2024 and in 2025, the projects will be exhibited both in Norway and several places in the USA. From 2001 to 2016, he worked for both Rogalands Avis and Stavanger Aftenblad.

How can a bad picture taken by a journalist and inspiration from the Dokfestivalen in Fredrikstad make a photographer spend nearly ten years of his life documenting a small community in the middle of the farmland in the USA? Stavanger in the USA is a crossroads, ten houses and a church, and the starting point for the project which eventually covers the entire area where the first organized emigrants settled permanently. After nearly 200 years, there are still some who cling to Norwegian culture, language and traditions, but they are getting older and with each generation something of the Norwegian dies. But you can still be welcomed, eat lefser, kringler and komler, and sing "Jeg er så glad hver julekveld" - in Norwegian.