The photographs
Technical aspects
The black and white photos on this site were all shot on film. Aside from one or two, all were shot on medium format film. The photos from Sweden were made using one of three cameras. A Graflex Century Graphic view camera, a Plaubel 69W or a Mamiya 7II. I processed all the film by hand and scanned in the negatives with an Epson V750 scanner. I used Photoshop Elements to remove dust spots and to adjust parameters that one can adjust in an analog way. That is, basically, contrast and brightness. My intention is not to make digital images but to recreate analog photographs, something I find difficult but continue to work towards.
I have processed the negatives in anticipation of ultimately printing them using analog techniques. These negatives can be printed large (at least 16×20 inches (40×50 cm)) and the photos are meant to be viewed that way.
How they happen
I don’t go out with cameras searching for photographs to make. I just live my life and see photographs. Of course, I have to go back with a camera if I actually want to make a real photograph. But that is ok, it is what I do. The point is, these are places I frequent in my everyday life. Essentially, I have relationships with these places and the people that live there. I live in Vasastan and I am working on Projekt Vasastan. I lived in Atlanta for years and in the Mechanicsville neighborhood for the last eight of them. My sambo’s mother lives at the end of the Roslagsbanan, and the family goes to Gotland every year.
I took my cameras to Havana, Cuba expressly to photograph there, but I grew up in south Florida in the 1960’s. Cuba was a part of our everyday life, the Cuban Missile Crisis and all, and I wanted to visit before Castro died, so yet another relationship. The other photos, such as those from Butler and Taylor County, came about because of a human relationship. But again, I made the connections because I was there living my life in the first place.
I always tell my students: “If you are going to photograph something, have a relationship with it. It shows in the photographs.”
