Facts: The image of Sweden
Congratulations Sweden! The Swedish state turns 500 years old and in a series of texts on the theme “Swedish image” we focus on different depictions of Sweden and the Swedes in culture.
A mustachioed man joylessly drives a toy car past Father Christmas at “Tomteland” in Mora. Two boys in styrofoam bicycle helmets approach a desolate suburban square in front of a Domus. A lucia train sings to visitors in the meat department of a grocery store. Everything is bathed in lightning and sunlight.
In shopping malls, campsites and parking lots, Lars Tunbjörk painted a picture of Sweden that was sort of the antithesis of Carl Larsson’s. Like the British photographer Martin Parr, but with more melancholy and thoughtfulness.
No one has probably dialed in the true Swedish ugliness as well as Lars Tunbjörk. But also partying, humor and all that interesting stuff going on in the periphery.
Capturing a zeitgeist and, as it were, taking the pulse of an entire nation in the midst of an upheaval change is not easy. Being an interpreter of a historical stage is also usually a role that is assigned afterwards.
But already in 1993, when the photo book “Landet umot sig” was published and the writer Göran Greider contributed text, Greider thought he knew what it was all about: a people’s home that is falling apart and leaving room for a new commercialism in garish colors.
“Tuna bircher”
Tunbjörklandet seems so aimless, the inhabitants so lost. Where are we going? What do we want? No idea, but it’s a scrap price for a pork loin.
Lars Tunbjörk himself felt uncomfortable with those big socially critical claims. Rather, he must have had a pragmatic view of photography that is quite typical of an old press photographer, Göran Greider later told. The environments must have been ones that Tunbjörk, the Boråsian, felt at home in.
Over time, in any case, “Tunbjörkare” became a term in much the same way as “Norénjul”. One wonders what Tunbjörk’s pictures have done for the Swedish self-image.
Lars Tunbjörk. Stock photo.”One of our great”
Would Mikael Marcimain have had the same eye for the ugly people’s home without Lars Tunbjörk? Would football journalist Erik Niva describe the angry atmosphere at Råsunda in the early 1990s with the same empathy without the images from “Landet utom sig” in the back of his mind. Would “Häng city” author Mikael Yvesand’s childhood memories from a sun-bleached Luleå look the same without Tunbjörk?
No clue. One thing that is certain is that Lars Tunbjörk became a big international name and that he inspired a whole generation of Nordic photographers after him. As the documentary filmmaker and Tunbjörk’s life partner Maud Nycander said Today’s news 2018:
— Many filmmakers have also used “Landet umot sig” almost like a bible, it is on filming locations and in advertising agencies. He is one of our great portrayers of Sweden.
Lars Tunbjörk passed away in April 2015, aged 59.