Simon Johansson Portraits the Life Seldom Seen

Swedish photographer Simon Johansson points his camera to the places seldom seen and often forgotten in all of their modesty

WORDS: OSKAR HAMMARKRANTZ, PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON JOHANSSON

Öland. Sweden’s second-largest island, located off the east coast. If you turn north when you arrive from the bridge from mainland Sweden, you will find wealthy farmers, cute little villages and, during the summer, tourists on vacation. But if you turn south, there is another Öland. Poorer, higher unemployment, cracking paint, depopulated villages. A part of the country seldom seen on postcards or in camping ground brochures.

“People are struggling without any greater hope of change. My aim is not to show misery but an almost forgotten part of our country. The life that goes on, but we often miss it since it's so ordinary and homely.” says photographer Simon Johansson.

Johansson’s own history with the island goes back many years. He used to stay in a summer cottage every year for more than 30 years, and he also had a relationship with a local woman. His pictures of Öland have resulted in the book Across the Bridge, published in 2016; however, the pictures span from 2009 to 2014.

“My aim is not to show misery but an almost forgotten part of our country.”

From Across the bridge, 2016.

“The book is partly about breaking up a relationship and partly about leaving a place I have such strong connections to.” Johansson’s photography is in grainy black and white, with timeless qualities, and is in the classic Swedish school of photography, with pioneers such as as Christer Strömholm and Anders Petersen.

“I try to avoid mobile phones and computers in my images since they age so quickly. They become instant time markers.” Johansson started as a writing reporter, mainly working for customer magazines. He soon realised that he saw angles and ideas the photographers didn’t see. So he bought himself a camera and became a one man reportage team. Johansson grew up in Kungsängen, a small municipality north of Stockholm. As a teenager, he regularly took the commuter train to the capital, going to the movies, eating at McDonalds and letting himself get blinded by the neon lights.

“Stockholm. It is impossible to evade your beauty, vulnerability, and vanity. And your flaws. Your rottenness. I visit places where you bleed, I am there picking your scabs. Sometimes I grow tired of you and your easily broken promises. But I never give up on you. Your streets have always offered me direction. Walking here today, I stumble on old memories.” Johansson wrote in his book* A familiar place* (2018), a collection of street photography taken between 2005 and 2018.

“I try to avoid mobile phones and computers in my images since they age so quickly. They become instant time markers.”

As a trained journalist, Johansson complements his photo books with personal, often poetic, texts. “I try to capture and describe a feeling, rather than writing captions. I want the pictures to stand and talk for themselves, and not tell the observer what they see or what they should think. I don’t like to know anything beforehand about other photographers' pictures and I don’t want people to know anything about mine. It kills curiosity and takes away the mystery. A good photo asks questions, and the best person to answer those questions is the viewer.”

In his third book, The Young Ones (2019), Simon Johansson focuses on children and remembers his own childhood, in a series of pictures taken between 2002 and 2019. The book is a beautiful, curious, and even poetic painting of childhood, performed in classic black and white photography.

“I like to depict children in a natural way. These pictures also help me to remember and process my own childhood.”