It’s a tough question. I automatically start thinking about all the photographs that has stayed with me from when I was studying photography. I looked at images in a different way then, often in books, and would get back to the same images again and again.

But if I have to choose one image, and one that has been with me for a while, it’s the image of the polar bear on the remnant of an iceberg in Svalbard by Arne Nævra from 2005. It’s been widely debated and shown in different contexts, which is one of the things that make the image interesting to me. The photograph was criticized by the so-called Klimarealistene for being manipulated, to support their claims that climate change is not caused by human factors – as if a faked photo would prove that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. In any case, the picture isn’t manipulated, but the false claim about fakery perhaps says something about our relationship with the truth of photographs.

I found the photograph recently again on a postcard in Tromsø with the text ‘Norway’ written on it. There, amidst picturesque motifs of the Northern Lights, mountains and fjords, the picture was used as a sort of advertisement for Norway and spectacular nature. It’s completely absurd. It’s such a symbolic image, but as a postcard it makes me think of Norway as an oil nation, a force that contribute to climate change. Turning the image into an “advertisement”, the postcard comes across as an emblem of Norwegian double standards.

The motivation of the photographer is clear: he’s a nature conservationist, but the image takes new directions outside his control, which makes it even more fascinating.

In our very first issues, we invited different people to write about an image they found memorable, under the headline ’Sinnbilde’. Now, in Objektiv’s 10th year, as the ocean of images continues to swell, we’re reigniting this column online.