Totally Stockholm 1
In the eye of the beholder Fotografiska, as they
often do, approach things a little differently. While most places would take a retrospective glance back after 10 years, they’re doing it, to a certain degree, after eight. They’re celebrating their eight-year anniversary with a new photo-book, The Eye, featuring selected images from Fotografiska’s exhibitions. With that on the table, and a new Fotografiska set to open in New York early next year, we thought it was a good time to check the lay of the land with co-founder Per Broman. words: Austin Maloney After eight years with Fotografiska, you’re now releasing a book, The Eye. Why now, why have you chosen to put out a book now? We have looked back every year at what we have done. Now we have done over 160 exhibitions since we opened Fotografiska in Stockholm. It’s an unbelievable document of photography, and of where photography is today. There’s quite a lot of history there. So to put this out now feels like a celebration of our first eight years. We’re working on international expansion now, we’re going to open Fotografiska in New York and London next year, and it feels like celebrating the eight-year anniversary with that and this book is a beautiful thing. What can you tell us about the book? What was your goal with it and what do you want to capture in it? The goal was to make a document of the eight years of Fotografiska, and also have a nice variation. When we looked back at the material we have exhibited over the eight years here, we have had a really nice blend of different types of photography. And we wanted to display it in a different way. So we thought, ‘ok, if we made a book, how would it look?’. And so we decided to display pictures side by side that one can associate with one another, that work together. It’s a wonderful document. And I also wondered what you thought the role of a photography book in 2018 is, in the age of the internet when people can look at whatever kind of photos they want whenever they want? I think that photobooks will become more and more important, as everything becomes more digital. The physical expression has a stillness and security, a certainty, to it. And that’s what a physical book brings. Readership increases for normal books, even though people listen to Storytell and other digital outlets. It’s a little bit like with our exhibitions, physical photos that hang on the walls. Physical art is an experience that’s something entirely different from the digital experience. The digital just completes it. There’s another value to it, a value to physical material that’s still there, and I think is wonderful. Even just look at the quality of the paper, it gives it a dimension that the digital doesn’t have. It is edited by Johan Lindskog and he has done a great job with his eye for humour and shapes. The Broman brothers by Fotografiska in New York 8 photo: Thomas Nilsson