As his landmark retrospective at Bristol’s Arnolfini gallery closes this weekend, Gill reflects on his prolific career
Tag: Sweden
Inspired by a notebook he kept during a month-long residency in a remote town in the southern Sweden, Elias’ latest publication explores distance, intimacy and human connection
The Swedish photographer’s first monograph charts an intimate and empowering journey, searching for stability in the everyday as she comes to terms with a troubled past
A troubled young father named Tommy is at the centre of an ongoing series about a rebellious Swedish subculture
Stephen Gill’s practice is driven by a fascination with his immediate surroundings. From the longing to engage with the hidden wildlife that surrounds his home in rural Sweden, to the years he spent cycling through Hackney Wick, scouring its vast markets and narrow towpaths; it goes way back to his initial obsession as a child, to collect insects and bits of pondlife to inspect under his microscope. “My hobby morphed into what I do for a living,” he reflects, “making this new work took me right back to those early years, as if completing a full circle”.
For her latest work, Maja Daniels spent three years in Älvdalen, a small Swedish town shrouded by the mystery of a dying norse language, and its tragic history of witch trials
“I was quite scared to begin with,” says Ingvar Kenne, who has now been to ten Bachelor and Spinster (B&S) Balls, all in different regions of the Australian outback. “It’s by far one of the most intense things I’ve ever experienced. It’s full on, and non-stop.”
B&S Balls are notoriously drunken and raucous. They were originally set up to give young people in rural Australia the rare opportunity to meet a potential life partner. Nowadays they are mostly an excuse to party and let loose, but many of the old traditions have stuck, and hundreds of people still drive from all over the country to take part.
“For me it is important not to create a story with the pictures,” says Gerry Johansson. “Normally when you edit you try to sequence the photographs. But for me it is important that each picture is considered as a single, individual image.”
Johansson’s photography is largely driven by intuition, but when it comes to making a book, logic and order triumph. Almost all of his 31 photobooks are defined by their geography, if not the subject matter, and their equally-sized photographs are generally organised either alphabetically or chronologically, a bid to encourage readers to interpret them individually.
My advice to younger photographers is not to be a photographer but to be a human says Anders Petersen, the Swedish image-maker behind the celebrated photobook Café Lehmitz