SWEDISH PHOTOGRAPHY
When I started to write photography criticism on a regular basis in 1975, most of the photographic exhibitions I reviewed were documentary.
Almost every show of photographs that I had seen since the late sixties in Sweden had had a documentary mission. Their main purpose was to inform, agitate or persuade. Photography was a means of conveying moral or political ideas.
The emphasis was necessarily on the contents of the pictures. The subject, the message was the all-important thing. Grainy 35mm negatives and sloppy prints were in order as long as the subject was a just and righteous one.
Today, the scene is different. When I look around in the exhibitions of today's leading Swedish photographers or scrutinize the portfolios of young and upcoming photographers, I see a totally different kind of pictures. The photographs are primarily just photographs – fine prints, not manifestoes.
They are mainly still-lifes or landscapes, subtle and private and generally beautiful contact-prints from large sheet-film negatives.
Fine art photography has established itself as a strong trend in Swedish photography. A small group of photographers broke through the barriers towards the end of the 1970s and they are now encouraging younger photographers to pursue their own ways. The lid is off and signs look good for the 1980s.
A dark decade
Looking back, I tend to see the seventies as a dark and drab decade. It's not that nothing good was produced. Photo-journalism or documentary photography reached a high level in Sweden. We have a massive body of documentary work from factories, mines, developing countries and Swedish suburbs that is unique in an international perspective.
With the pioneering work of Jean Hermansson, photography reached into new areas and found a new meaning. His documentation of working conditions in foundries and the heavy metal-industry, published in two books in 1970-1971, was strong and convincing, both photographically and politically. It was even used by the trade unions to push for better working conditions.
The problem was, that this set rigid standards for the photography to come. He was followed by a score of photographers, who unfortunately did not have his talent and intensity.
The good intentions legitimated poor photography and eventually the photographers' individuality disappeared behind the "rightful" themes.
This trend was further manifested in the state subsidized Photography Center, from where a generation of young photographers got their inspiration - and alas, let their personal views and their spontaneity be quelled. It was just not considered proper to do anything introspective or private and those who tried, were soon discouraged. In some cases they even quit photography.
Along with this, the fine craft of photography was forgotten. The, american-born photographer Douglass Kneedler, living in Sweden, tried in vain to spread the word about fine prints, archival standards and private visions.
The Museum of Photography (Fotografiska museet), established as a department within the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm 1971 (but semi-officially working since 1964), did very little to bring new stimuli into this barren photographic soil.
It merely followed the stream of Swedish "concerned" photography". When it showed international photography, it was biased towards historical photo-journalism.
Two traditions and a third
"Concerned photography" has its tradition in Sweden, going back to a few early press photographers in the beginning of this century. A key figure was also the Leica-pioneer Gunnar Lundh, who started out as a socially concerned free-lance picture reporter already in 1927, equipped only with his two Leicas.
But traditions were of no concern to the "photo-activists" of 1968 and their followers.
Another strong tradition in Sweden is that of nature or wildlife photography. Its golden age began in the 1890s, when the national and romantic movement stimulated a whole generation of outstanding photographers to turn their lenses towards the Swedish landscape and its rural population.
They were followed by C.G. Rosenberg, the master of landscape and architecture photography of the 30s and the 40s.
But it was the ornithologist Bengt Berg with his photo-books from the 20s and 30s that influenced the nature photography to come. Today, the concern with ecology seems stronger than that with photography in this area.
The third tradition, fine art photography, naturally prospered in the pictoralist era. Photography as Art was also advocated by our great portraitist of the 20s, Henry B. Goodwin.
But the new objectivity not only made pictorialism and its printing processes obsolete, it also broke the connections with the past.
Then, around 1950, a generation of young photographers declared war against the subtle grayscales and intimate moods of the Salon-photography that thrived in the Swedish photo-clubs during the Second World War. Again the links were broken and fine printing declared obsolete.
A vital decade
My memories of Swedish photography during the sixties are those of a vital, many-faceted scene.
Sune Jonsson turned out a large number of books with his own photographs and prose, in which a documentary, almost ethnological style that was mixed with a poetical freedom in combining words with pictures and facts with fiction.
In 1965 Christer Strömholm held his first exhibition in Stockholm, followed by another one the next year.
He appeared, previously practically unknown in Sweden, with a powerful and dark language of visual poetry and symbolism.
His photographs spoke of death, agony, sexuality, confinement and withdrawal. Like a poet he worked with symbols, thus transforming his own memories and experiences of wars and hard times into general metaphors.
As a kind of legendary figure, he led the Photo-school in Stockholm 1962–1972, turning out over 1200 photographers.
After a long silence, Strömholm returned with a large, retrospective exhibition in the Camera Obscura photo gallery in Stockholm 1978. This was the beginning of a second coming for him. Today he is gaining some of the recognition his unique photography deserves.
In 1980 he was awarded the Big Photography Prize by the largest photo magazine in Scandinavia, the Swedish FOTO. The September issue of Swiss Camera the same year was devoted entirely to his pictures and this summer Strömholm showed a slide show of his own in the Arles festival.
Strömholm's teaching placed strong emphasis on the photographer's responsibility and the respect for the people he photographs. That meant a lot to the coming generations of concerned photographers. Sadly, the headmaster's fundamental attitude of developing a personal visual language never caught on. Not until now, at least.
Art photography enters the scene
Eventually things started to happen in the mid 1970s. Individual photographers found new inspiration in books, magazines and from encounters with original prints by the great masters in exhibitions in England and the USA.
A few efforts were made to display photographs in the art galleries and you could notice a new interest in the history of Swedish photography.
A large Paul Strand exhibition was seen in Stockholm 1976 and then, in 1977, a lot of things happened.
The Museum of Photography mounted two exhibitions, which together featured the work of seven important 20th century Swedish photographers. Among them were the portraitist Curt Götlin, a pupil of Henry B Goodwin and Nicola Perscheid, the new objectivity photographers Arne Wahlberg and Emil Heilborn and the prominent photo-journalist from the 50s Anna Riwkin.
These exhibitions introduced a lot of people to a hitherto unknown photographic past. The links with the past became visible.
In the fall of 1977 the Camera Obscura photographic gallery opened in a row of vaults in the Old Town of Stockholm.
This gallery, run by photographer Lennart Durehed, a former assistant of Irving Penn, and art director Lars Hall provided a serious and beautiful setting for fine photographs.
It became the first and so far the sole gallery in Sweden devoted to photography.
In addition to the cellar vaults with their ingenious display system that lets the pictures "float" in front of the ancient brick walls, there is a bookstore on the street level, offering a large selection of photo-books.
The opening show was Irving Penn’s platinum prints. That was followed by Steiglitz and Weston before the first Swedish photographer Hans Gedda was featured, showing his Arbusian portraits.
The mixture of Swedish photographers with contemporary and classic. names continued.
In a way, the gallery did what the Museum of Photography had failed to do over the years: to show the best of old and new photography and to display original prints of high quality.
The policy of the gallery was sometimes more that of a museum than that of a commercial gallery.
Thus the Camera Obscura showed Duane Michals, Atget, Lilo Raymond, Lartigue, Brassaï, Joel Meyrowitz, John Batho, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, Josef Koudelka, Imogen Cunningham, Jan Groover, Richard Misrach etc.
The Swedish photographers that were given major shows include Hans Hammarskiöld, Otmar Thormann, Christer Strömholm, Hans Persson, "Dawid" and Lennart Olsson.
The gallery introduced selling photographs to a wider audience. So far, print sales have not been overwhelming. The main source of income is still the bookstore.
But print buyers are definitely increasing. In the beginning, a handful of people invested or bought for pleasure, but now there are many more customers. Fewer prints per customer perhaps, but nevertheless more prints are sold.
The gallery is now going into portfolio production. This autumn, the first portfolio will appear, containing six gum bichromate prints by Lennart Olsson.
This photographer won international acclaim in the early 50s with his graphically abstract photographs of bridges (see Petr Tausk: The History of Photography in the 20th Century). After many years away from still photography, Olsson recently rediscovered the gum bichromate process. He began to print his old negatives adding new dimensions to his old images and adding new negatives to his work.
He prints his pictures . in a beautiful gray scale with deep blacks. The bridges now contrasts with the Italian landscape or with running water.
The portfolio will be published in a limited edition of 30 copies, of which the first 10 will be sold at a price of $1500.
Plans exist for further portfolios, such as one including a selection of contemporary Swedish artists and one with dye transfers by Petter Antonisen, who earlier this year exhibited studies both in black and white and color of surface patterns on canvas coverings.
Into the eighties
There is a number of more or less established members of the fine art trend in Swedish photography. Inspired by them and the exhibitions of photography, a new generation is working consciously to develop own ways of expression and to grasp the traditional craft of photography.
Among the leading photographers like Thormann, Gunnar Smoliansky and "Dawid", old large format cameras, old soft focus lenses, all kinds of toning methods and the search for various surfaces and tints on odd photo-papers play a great role in their work.
Sometimes I feel that they (or we, me included) risk getting trapped in the search for the ultimate variations in toning or in the enthusiasm for a certain, now extinct paper quality.
Otmar Thormann is perhaps the most mature and advanced among them. Born in Austria 1944 and trained as a pastry maker, he took up photography around 1967. He took part in many group exhibitions and held several one-man exhibitions during the 70s, mostly in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.
The encounter with the photography of Josef Sudek in 1977 made a tremendous impact on him. His continuing passion for the world of Sudek since then is not that of an imitator.
Rather Sudek's images and mood helped him to find his own roots and to develop a personal style. While several of his still lives might bear a resemblance to Sudek and other central European artists, Thormann shows, for instance, in his latest work that he can transform plain objects, like the "Geldmaschine" shown here into compositions filled with suspense and beauty. They have something of that same mystique that you find in Sudek's work.
Gunnar Smoliansky, born 1933, began his career as an industrial photographer but has been known as a fine and sensitive free lance "street photographer" since the middle of the 60s.
The shock of seeing original prints of masters that he only knew from the printed page, led him to investigate roads new to him; roads leading back to the traditions of photography.
While he still may be searching for a visual language that is really his very own in this new area, he is building a portfolio of considerable beauty and convincing strengths. The photographs reproduced here are contacts from 10x14 inch negatives.
"Dawid", who appears as a commercial photographer under his real name Björn Dawidsson but prefers to keep the artist and the breadwinner apart, is a younger photographer, still in his early thirties.
Stimulated by Thormann and Smoliansky to a rapid development as an artist, he also gets art his inspiration from the avant-garde of the 1920s and from contemporary trends in art. His large one-man exhibition in the Camera Obscura last year showed great talent. Quite consciously he exhibited his ambiguity and his continuous search and experimentation. He deals with his influences by challenging them and often titles photographs "homage" to someone. Often his photographs are games with surface and volume.
Other photographers must be included in this context are Stina Brockman, Denise Grünstein, Björn Keller, Walter Hirsch and Jan Gunnar Sjölin. The latter, by the way, teaches photography as an art historian at the University of Lund.
To conclude, I would like to bring the attention to an absolute new name in Swedish photography. Tarja Kettunen just finished a two year photographic school, not having photographed before entering it. In the pupils' exhibition when school ended this spring, her delicately conceived and two-toned (selenium) still-lives stood out as among the very best photographs I have seen from Swedish photographers in these days.
She is 30.years old and has studied painting, from which, obviously, she gained her formal confidence. One of her photographs illustrated my exhibition review in FOTO in August this year.
To me she represents the present revolution in Swedish photography. While documentary photography is facing a creative and esthetic crisis fine art photography is surging forward.
Pär Rittsel, July 1981, in the Swiss magazine print letter.
Almost every show of photographs that I had seen since the late sixties in Sweden had had a documentary mission. Their main purpose was to inform, agitate or persuade. Photography was a means of conveying moral or political ideas.
The emphasis was necessarily on the contents of the pictures. The subject, the message was the all-important thing. Grainy 35mm negatives and sloppy prints were in order as long as the subject was a just and righteous one.
Today, the scene is different. When I look around in the exhibitions of today's leading Swedish photographers or scrutinize the portfolios of young and upcoming photographers, I see a totally different kind of pictures. The photographs are primarily just photographs – fine prints, not manifestoes.
They are mainly still-lifes or landscapes, subtle and private and generally beautiful contact-prints from large sheet-film negatives.
Fine art photography has established itself as a strong trend in Swedish photography. A small group of photographers broke through the barriers towards the end of the 1970s and they are now encouraging younger photographers to pursue their own ways. The lid is off and signs look good for the 1980s.
A dark decade
Looking back, I tend to see the seventies as a dark and drab decade. It's not that nothing good was produced. Photo-journalism or documentary photography reached a high level in Sweden. We have a massive body of documentary work from factories, mines, developing countries and Swedish suburbs that is unique in an international perspective.
With the pioneering work of Jean Hermansson, photography reached into new areas and found a new meaning. His documentation of working conditions in foundries and the heavy metal-industry, published in two books in 1970-1971, was strong and convincing, both photographically and politically. It was even used by the trade unions to push for better working conditions.
The problem was, that this set rigid standards for the photography to come. He was followed by a score of photographers, who unfortunately did not have his talent and intensity.
The good intentions legitimated poor photography and eventually the photographers' individuality disappeared behind the "rightful" themes.
This trend was further manifested in the state subsidized Photography Center, from where a generation of young photographers got their inspiration - and alas, let their personal views and their spontaneity be quelled. It was just not considered proper to do anything introspective or private and those who tried, were soon discouraged. In some cases they even quit photography.
Along with this, the fine craft of photography was forgotten. The, american-born photographer Douglass Kneedler, living in Sweden, tried in vain to spread the word about fine prints, archival standards and private visions.
The Museum of Photography (Fotografiska museet), established as a department within the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm 1971 (but semi-officially working since 1964), did very little to bring new stimuli into this barren photographic soil.
It merely followed the stream of Swedish "concerned" photography". When it showed international photography, it was biased towards historical photo-journalism.
Two traditions and a third
"Concerned photography" has its tradition in Sweden, going back to a few early press photographers in the beginning of this century. A key figure was also the Leica-pioneer Gunnar Lundh, who started out as a socially concerned free-lance picture reporter already in 1927, equipped only with his two Leicas.
But traditions were of no concern to the "photo-activists" of 1968 and their followers.
Another strong tradition in Sweden is that of nature or wildlife photography. Its golden age began in the 1890s, when the national and romantic movement stimulated a whole generation of outstanding photographers to turn their lenses towards the Swedish landscape and its rural population.
They were followed by C.G. Rosenberg, the master of landscape and architecture photography of the 30s and the 40s.
But it was the ornithologist Bengt Berg with his photo-books from the 20s and 30s that influenced the nature photography to come. Today, the concern with ecology seems stronger than that with photography in this area.
The third tradition, fine art photography, naturally prospered in the pictoralist era. Photography as Art was also advocated by our great portraitist of the 20s, Henry B. Goodwin.
But the new objectivity not only made pictorialism and its printing processes obsolete, it also broke the connections with the past.
Then, around 1950, a generation of young photographers declared war against the subtle grayscales and intimate moods of the Salon-photography that thrived in the Swedish photo-clubs during the Second World War. Again the links were broken and fine printing declared obsolete.
A vital decade
My memories of Swedish photography during the sixties are those of a vital, many-faceted scene.
Sune Jonsson turned out a large number of books with his own photographs and prose, in which a documentary, almost ethnological style that was mixed with a poetical freedom in combining words with pictures and facts with fiction.
In 1965 Christer Strömholm held his first exhibition in Stockholm, followed by another one the next year.
He appeared, previously practically unknown in Sweden, with a powerful and dark language of visual poetry and symbolism.
His photographs spoke of death, agony, sexuality, confinement and withdrawal. Like a poet he worked with symbols, thus transforming his own memories and experiences of wars and hard times into general metaphors.
As a kind of legendary figure, he led the Photo-school in Stockholm 1962–1972, turning out over 1200 photographers.
After a long silence, Strömholm returned with a large, retrospective exhibition in the Camera Obscura photo gallery in Stockholm 1978. This was the beginning of a second coming for him. Today he is gaining some of the recognition his unique photography deserves.
In 1980 he was awarded the Big Photography Prize by the largest photo magazine in Scandinavia, the Swedish FOTO. The September issue of Swiss Camera the same year was devoted entirely to his pictures and this summer Strömholm showed a slide show of his own in the Arles festival.
Strömholm's teaching placed strong emphasis on the photographer's responsibility and the respect for the people he photographs. That meant a lot to the coming generations of concerned photographers. Sadly, the headmaster's fundamental attitude of developing a personal visual language never caught on. Not until now, at least.
Art photography enters the scene
Eventually things started to happen in the mid 1970s. Individual photographers found new inspiration in books, magazines and from encounters with original prints by the great masters in exhibitions in England and the USA.
A few efforts were made to display photographs in the art galleries and you could notice a new interest in the history of Swedish photography.
A large Paul Strand exhibition was seen in Stockholm 1976 and then, in 1977, a lot of things happened.
The Museum of Photography mounted two exhibitions, which together featured the work of seven important 20th century Swedish photographers. Among them were the portraitist Curt Götlin, a pupil of Henry B Goodwin and Nicola Perscheid, the new objectivity photographers Arne Wahlberg and Emil Heilborn and the prominent photo-journalist from the 50s Anna Riwkin.
These exhibitions introduced a lot of people to a hitherto unknown photographic past. The links with the past became visible.
In the fall of 1977 the Camera Obscura photographic gallery opened in a row of vaults in the Old Town of Stockholm.
This gallery, run by photographer Lennart Durehed, a former assistant of Irving Penn, and art director Lars Hall provided a serious and beautiful setting for fine photographs.
It became the first and so far the sole gallery in Sweden devoted to photography.
In addition to the cellar vaults with their ingenious display system that lets the pictures "float" in front of the ancient brick walls, there is a bookstore on the street level, offering a large selection of photo-books.
The opening show was Irving Penn’s platinum prints. That was followed by Steiglitz and Weston before the first Swedish photographer Hans Gedda was featured, showing his Arbusian portraits.
The mixture of Swedish photographers with contemporary and classic. names continued.
In a way, the gallery did what the Museum of Photography had failed to do over the years: to show the best of old and new photography and to display original prints of high quality.
The policy of the gallery was sometimes more that of a museum than that of a commercial gallery.
Thus the Camera Obscura showed Duane Michals, Atget, Lilo Raymond, Lartigue, Brassaï, Joel Meyrowitz, John Batho, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, Josef Koudelka, Imogen Cunningham, Jan Groover, Richard Misrach etc.
The Swedish photographers that were given major shows include Hans Hammarskiöld, Otmar Thormann, Christer Strömholm, Hans Persson, "Dawid" and Lennart Olsson.
The gallery introduced selling photographs to a wider audience. So far, print sales have not been overwhelming. The main source of income is still the bookstore.
But print buyers are definitely increasing. In the beginning, a handful of people invested or bought for pleasure, but now there are many more customers. Fewer prints per customer perhaps, but nevertheless more prints are sold.
The gallery is now going into portfolio production. This autumn, the first portfolio will appear, containing six gum bichromate prints by Lennart Olsson.
This photographer won international acclaim in the early 50s with his graphically abstract photographs of bridges (see Petr Tausk: The History of Photography in the 20th Century). After many years away from still photography, Olsson recently rediscovered the gum bichromate process. He began to print his old negatives adding new dimensions to his old images and adding new negatives to his work.
He prints his pictures . in a beautiful gray scale with deep blacks. The bridges now contrasts with the Italian landscape or with running water.
The portfolio will be published in a limited edition of 30 copies, of which the first 10 will be sold at a price of $1500.
Plans exist for further portfolios, such as one including a selection of contemporary Swedish artists and one with dye transfers by Petter Antonisen, who earlier this year exhibited studies both in black and white and color of surface patterns on canvas coverings.
Into the eighties
There is a number of more or less established members of the fine art trend in Swedish photography. Inspired by them and the exhibitions of photography, a new generation is working consciously to develop own ways of expression and to grasp the traditional craft of photography.
Among the leading photographers like Thormann, Gunnar Smoliansky and "Dawid", old large format cameras, old soft focus lenses, all kinds of toning methods and the search for various surfaces and tints on odd photo-papers play a great role in their work.
Sometimes I feel that they (or we, me included) risk getting trapped in the search for the ultimate variations in toning or in the enthusiasm for a certain, now extinct paper quality.
Otmar Thormann is perhaps the most mature and advanced among them. Born in Austria 1944 and trained as a pastry maker, he took up photography around 1967. He took part in many group exhibitions and held several one-man exhibitions during the 70s, mostly in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.
The encounter with the photography of Josef Sudek in 1977 made a tremendous impact on him. His continuing passion for the world of Sudek since then is not that of an imitator.
Rather Sudek's images and mood helped him to find his own roots and to develop a personal style. While several of his still lives might bear a resemblance to Sudek and other central European artists, Thormann shows, for instance, in his latest work that he can transform plain objects, like the "Geldmaschine" shown here into compositions filled with suspense and beauty. They have something of that same mystique that you find in Sudek's work.
Gunnar Smoliansky, born 1933, began his career as an industrial photographer but has been known as a fine and sensitive free lance "street photographer" since the middle of the 60s.
The shock of seeing original prints of masters that he only knew from the printed page, led him to investigate roads new to him; roads leading back to the traditions of photography.
While he still may be searching for a visual language that is really his very own in this new area, he is building a portfolio of considerable beauty and convincing strengths. The photographs reproduced here are contacts from 10x14 inch negatives.
"Dawid", who appears as a commercial photographer under his real name Björn Dawidsson but prefers to keep the artist and the breadwinner apart, is a younger photographer, still in his early thirties.
Stimulated by Thormann and Smoliansky to a rapid development as an artist, he also gets art his inspiration from the avant-garde of the 1920s and from contemporary trends in art. His large one-man exhibition in the Camera Obscura last year showed great talent. Quite consciously he exhibited his ambiguity and his continuous search and experimentation. He deals with his influences by challenging them and often titles photographs "homage" to someone. Often his photographs are games with surface and volume.
Other photographers must be included in this context are Stina Brockman, Denise Grünstein, Björn Keller, Walter Hirsch and Jan Gunnar Sjölin. The latter, by the way, teaches photography as an art historian at the University of Lund.
To conclude, I would like to bring the attention to an absolute new name in Swedish photography. Tarja Kettunen just finished a two year photographic school, not having photographed before entering it. In the pupils' exhibition when school ended this spring, her delicately conceived and two-toned (selenium) still-lives stood out as among the very best photographs I have seen from Swedish photographers in these days.
She is 30.years old and has studied painting, from which, obviously, she gained her formal confidence. One of her photographs illustrated my exhibition review in FOTO in August this year.
To me she represents the present revolution in Swedish photography. While documentary photography is facing a creative and esthetic crisis fine art photography is surging forward.
Pär Rittsel, July 1981, in the Swiss magazine print letter.