Sugar Paper Theories is a photobook created in 2016 by photographer, Jack Latham. This body of work had previously only been exhibited at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography and the exhibition being held at The Royal Photographic Society shows extra work created especially for this exhibition. Further information about the exhibition can be found here.

The photobook and exhibition is about the most controversial and infamous Icelandic murder investigation, the Guðmundur and Geirfinnur case, or the Reykjavik Confessions. Latham’s project brought together new images with the original images, as well as using archival images and he interviewed as many of the key people involved as was possible. Latham visited the original sites from the investigation and took new images that played upon the concept of truth and reality.

The visit to the exhibition was arranged as a voluntary face to face event for the MA students and we were able to see the exhibition as well as attend a panel discussion afterwards with Jack Latham, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Professor in Forensic Psychology, and Erla Bolladottir, one of the six convicted in this case. It was an extremely interesting discussion about the case, the concept of ‘memory distrust syndrome’ and the concepts of truth, fact, and reality.

Latham did a lot of research for this project and sourced material from local newspapers and court cases and incorporated this archival material into his project in way that plays with the concept of the photographic narrative and causes the viewer to question that the differences are betwen what is factual and what is true.

Latham worked collaboratively with Erla Bolladottir and others involved in this case, saying that when photography is used to tell as story, then the photographer should become part of the story too which shifts the photographer from being an observer to being part of something. He emphasised that photographers who do this type of photography take on an obligation to represent the people accurately and tell their story authentically.