E45

Värmland

Cafe Hängmattan

Gruppo F inbox: Fredrik Skott

Hällekis

Girl

Heja Sverige!

Säffle - Göteborg

Home sweet home

Cosmopolitan

Fabrik

©Fredrik Skott

Småland

utan titel

utan titel

book review: Thousands

Thousands.
Photo: Kyungwoo Chun.
Text: Nils Ohlsen, Wulf Herzogenrath, Jiyoon Lee & Urs Stahel.
Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008.
ISBN: ISBN 978-3-7757-2167-7.

In photo books the images usually stand in the center; the focus is the result of a project. Rarely is anything said about the process, the way to the results. With the Korean photographer Kyungwoo Chun's new book, the situation is different. Here the process itself is as interesting as the photographic works. Thousands consists of a well-told history, a thought-out project, which goes beyond the ordinary.

In 1592 General Ri Chun Man emigrated from China, left his family and began a new life in Korea. Over 400 years and sixteen generations later, the photographer, Kyungwoo, became interested in his unusual surname Chun (“thousand" in English) and fascinated by his ancestor, the famous general, his life and living. Following the general’s tracks led to three remote villages in the Chinese Henan-district. Almost every resident in and around the villages bore the family name Chun, which was also the name of one of the villages.

Together with the villagers Kyungwoo Chun organized and carried out the project Thousands. He portrayed one thousand people with the name Chun. Exposure times were long, and referred again to the family name: sixty seconds per portrait, a total of one thousand minutes. After developing the prints in Germany, where Kyungwoo now lives, he returned to China with the pictures. On each and every one of the photographs, the portrayed wrote their name, age and place of birth.

© Kyungwoo Chun.
One of the families, who bore the name Chun, was instructed to follow the road, by which general Ri Chun Man in the 1500s traveled from China to Korea. The family carried Kyungwoo’s one thousand photographs, packaged in red silk. Arriving in Seoul, stamps were put on the pictures and, one by one, they were posted to Kyungwoo Chun’s studio in Germany. Once in Germany, the now often damaged photographs, were assembled and exhibited.

The thousand portrayed Chun’s are all looking into the camera. Their faces are blurred, because of the long exposure time. The tone of the images is red, in China considered to be a lucky color, which reinforces their timeless feeling. Together, the photographs are a kind of archive of General Chun’s contemporary relatives. When all are exhibited at one time, as in Thousands, they remind me of an army, a sort of modern parallel to the old and famous Chinese terracotta army. In addition to the one thousand portraits, Kyungwoo Chun also reconstructed a general's uniform from the 1500s. He made a number of larger portraits, of male Chun’s wearing the uniform. The exposure times were now even longer. 49 minutes, reflecting the number of years General Ri Chun Man lived.

© Kyungwoo Chun.
Kyungwoo Chun's poetic photographs are fascinating. The long shutter times give the portraits a sense of closeness and distance. By their nature, they are on the borderline between photography and painting. At the same time, their unique character is reminiscent of the childhood of photography, to daguerreotyper and wet plates, Thousands are, as I have stated, a photo book beyond the ordinary. It’s a book about the meeting of cultures, about history and the present. A book that addresses the tradition and meanings of kinship, in the past as well as in contemporary societies. A book which indirectly raises the question whether the results are always the most important. A book to think about. And not least, a book filled with beautiful and fascinating photographs.

- Fredrik Skott

Kyungwoo Chun was born in 1969 in Seoul and now operates in Germany. He has studied photography in both countries and has, since the mid-1990s, carried out numerous exhibitions throughout Europe and Asia. During 2009 it´s possible to see his work in Denmark (Åarhus kunstbygning, Aarhus), South Korea (Total museum of contemporary Art, Seoul) and Germany (Galleri DNA, Berlin).

Thanks to Rhonda Prince for help with the translation of this review.

equipment: szabad 8x10", rodenstock imagon 360mm & adox ortho 25.

Gruppo F exhibition

A forest

Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
If you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes

I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees

Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again and again

equipment: hasselblad, hp5+, tape, op12 (lith), water, needle, contrete wall, trees, selenium, emaks k883 and some inspiration from the cure.

book review: En blues från Landskrona

En blues från Landskrona.
Photo: Thomas H Johnsson.
Text: Jonas Bergh.
Published by Kulturföreningen JB23, 2007.
Out of stock.
ISBN: 978-91-85629-12-1.


A few days ago I received En blues från Landskrona [A blues from Landskrona] by Thomas H Johnsson (photos) and Jonas Bergh (text). Subsequently, I have read the text and looked at the photographs not once, but several times. The book touches me deeply.

The photos are close, intense and often dark portraits of people in Landskrona, often of individuals on the fringe of society. "Immigrants" and "Swedes" include: an old man secretly drinking behind a fence, a young boy with his gun, someone using his stiletto to turn his hamburgers when having a barbecue on his doorstep, a man showing his knocked-out teeth, another man with needle marks in his arm, an elderly woman on her way to an anonymous residential quarter, a burned-out car.

Engelbrektsgatan © Thomas H Johnsson.

Timmermansgatan © Thomas H Johnsson.
People who, in one way or another, stand outside society are an important theme in Thomas H Johnssons's photographs, as well as the difference between the inhabitants of Landskrona. But the joy, freedom and, above all, the pride of the people portrayed aren't missing but are an important element in his portraits. The photographs breath punk; a movement that has obviously inspired Johnsson and Bergh.

Thomas's photographs are presented with the personal and brilliantly written texts by Jonas Bergh. In a sense, therefore, the reader gets two stories about the life in Landskrona. The combination of the text and the photographs is exceptionally successful.

Rådmansgatan © Thomas H Johnsson.

Rönnebergsgatan © Thomas H Johnsson.
The images, usually just named after the street they are photographed in, are captured in Landskrona, but they could be taken anywhere. The same applies to Bergh's text. The book could have been titled A blues from Säffle, A blues from Jönköping or a blues from any Swedish city. In many respects, through Landskrona, they give personal, political and very important portraits of Sweden of today. At least that is how I see it.

- Fredrik Skott

The review is also published in Swedish, here.

book review: Lennart Nilsson Stockholm

Lennart Nilsson Stockholm.
Photo: Lennart Nilsson.
Text: Johan Erséus.
Photographic editor: Anne Fjellström.
Published by Bokförlaget Max Ström, 2008.
ISBN: 978-91-7126-083-3.


Stockholm, Sweden. Although I do not live there, I am fascinated by the many excellent photographic depictions of the city. Henry B Goodwin’s Vårt vackra Stockholm (1920), Gunnar Smolianskys fotografier från Slussen i Stockholm 1952 (2002) and Micke Berg's Stockholm Blues (1994) are photo books that I repeatedly return to. Now there is another excellent portrait of Stockholm and its inhabitants, with photographs by Lennart Nilsson.

Spring in Stockholm © Lennart Nilsson, 1956.
Lennart Nilsson (born 1922) doesn’t need to be presented to a Swedish audience. He is, without doubt, Sweden's most famous photographer. At the very least his photographs of the inside of the human body and the beginning of life have fascinated hundreds of thousands of people. Nilsson’s famous book, A Child Is Born, is published in four editions and translated into 20 languages. For his work he has received many awards and prizes, among them The Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation's Photography Award in 1980. British Museum and Tokyo Fuji Art Museum are two of the many places where his work can be found. His new book, however, is made up of lesser-known images from his time as a photojournalist in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s.

In addition to Swedish newspapers Vecko-Journalen and Se, Nilsson also worked for international magazines, Life Magazine and Look. From his extensive records, Anne Fjellström has selected and gathered a large number of photographs taken in Stockholm to create the magnificent volume Lennart Nilsson Stockholm. In addition to the photographs, Nilsson, with the aid of Johan Erséus, tells about the photographs and their history.

The staff at Sweden's Riksbank practice shooting © Lennart Nilsson, 1955.
Lobotomy operation of a criminal © Lennart Nilsson, 1950's.
The photographs of Lennart Nilsson Stockholm reflect not only the official polished façade. The book is far from a nostalgic recap. Keen-eyed Nilsson, instead, depicts both the front and rear faces of society at that time. The pictures show the unexpected, as well as the everyday - people in Stockholm, their life and living. Homeless, cleaners and postmen are portrayed as well as film stars, politicians and princes; both the working and upper class. Lennart Nilsson shows a Stockholm in celebration but also in work. The 1953 masquerade at the Royal Opera is intermingled with reports from the daily lives of contemporary postmen. The city's poor and homeless are included, as well as the officials of the Bank of Sweden and unique images from the salvage of regal Wasa.

The Salvation Army is the theme for one of the most interesting series of pictures. In the late 1950s Nilsson spent three months together with the Salvationists to document their lives and work. From the extensive material of 4,500 photos, 13 have been selected for the book. "Strangely enough people in the Salvation Army accepted my presence and my cameras," said Nilsson. It shows. The proximity to the Salvationists is striking, the pictures incredibly strong. At the same time, the pictures are artistic in the highest degree. The question is whether I have seen a better-illustrated reportage.

Salvation © Lennart Nilsson, 1950's.

"I came with a Slumsyster to a compromise wooden building at Södersjukhuset. When we came in we saw four small feet stand out under the sofa. The children were afraid that it was the father who had come". © Lennart Nilsson, 1950's.
Lennart Nilsson Stockholm is a personal portrait of Sweden’s capital and its inhabitants. But not only of Stockholm. At the same time many of the photographs give an overall picture of a departed Sweden. And in some ways, also of today’s Sweden; although it has been half a century since most of the photographs were taken, much in the book is recognizable from contemporary Sweden. This is a book out of the ordinary, a book to study again and again. I strongly recommend it to everybody that is interested in Photography as Art and/or in Stockholm and it's history.

© Lennart Nilsson.
Links: Ulf Fågelhammar, author of the F blog, met Lennart Nilsson in May 2008. Check out his reports. If you have the possibility, I also recommend you to visit Kulturhuset in Stockholm and see Lennart Nilsson's large photo exhibition "Somewhere in Stockholm". The exhibition ends September 7. And do not miss Lennart Nilsson’s official homepage.

- Fredrik Skott