'I often feel beside myself in the wintertime, and I try to go to warmer and lighter places. But the last couple of years I have travelled into the darkness instead - into areas, conditions and encounters in which I don't really know where the outer and inner begin. And even less where they end.'
There's another side to winter, a long way from the snowbound playground of romantic landscapes - a world in which the long, dark nights send temperatures below freezing, wrapping a claustrophobic blanket over the inhabitants of Europe's northern climes. This is a world Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjork knows well, and for his latest book, Vinter, published by Steidl, he set out to capture the mental state of his countrymen during the gloomy season. 'When you wake up on New Year's Day and all the party lights are gone, it's like the start of a three-month hangover,' he says.
'All the energy is gone and I can get quite depressed. It's dark when you wake up in the morning, and it's dark again by 3pm - and some days there's no real light in between.'
Tunbjork - who remains something of a cult photographer in the UK, despite nearly 40 solo shows on the Continent and eight acclaimed photo books - is best known for his wry, humorous take on modern mores, and a snap-shot documentary approach that is often compared to William Eggleston and his British contemporary, Martin Parr. But there's always been an edge to his photographs. Behind the white picket fences and neatly manicured flowerbeds of Home (published in 2003), or the bizarre 'hot-desk' experiments of corporate workplaces in Office (2002), something sinister lurks.
Vinter is his darkest work yet. Looser and more personal than much of his previous work, it presents a world far removed from that of a winter wonderland. Instead, a sense of loneliness and detachment runs through the book; his subjects confined mentally as much as physically, interspersed with desolate apartment blocks covered in dirt and sludge.
Stark vision
One picture, of two pigeons pecking at a urine-soaked mound of ice-hard snow, is about as unromantic a vision of winter as you'll ever see. 'Well, it's just outside my darkroom,' says the photographer. But there is a beauty of sorts. Another picture (shown on page 26) seems to reference Edward Hopper's The Nighthawks. 'He has always been a great inspiration,' Tunbjork confirms. 'So I was very happy to see this Hopper-esque woman in the hamburger bar.' And another, of a young woman looking out from her duvet (page 27), would seem almost misplaced in the book - were it not for her enigmatic stare. 'She is so beautiful, so naked and innocent and fragile. I met her at a restaurant where I had lunch and I had to take her portrait.'
These lighter moments are rare. 'I have no wish to live anywhere else,' says Tunbjork, 'but Swedes still have this melancholy. I have been thinking a lot about it, and maybe it is banal, but I really think the climate is a major reason - the hard winters and the bittersweet feeling in summer, which is wonderful, but you know it has to end. If you go to school's end before the long summer break, all over Sweden you will see parents crying when we sing the special summer psalm with its very beautiful bittersweet melody. Your time is counted.'
But Vinter isn't really about any place in particular. Tunbjork travelled around the country for three winter seasons, visiting small towns and photographing around Stockholm, from small tacky bars to fancy restaurants. 'The pictures are taken in (my homeland) and they are documentary in a way, but they are not a statement about today's Sweden. They are much more about myself. The show at Moderna Museet (in Stockholm late last year) was quite controversial, and because of the documentary language some people were provoked by the rawness of it. But many people were very moved, and at the opening some people were actually crying - especially people who have gone through hard times. It was very touching.'
Swedish winter
Previously, he says, he's never been able to make good personal work during the Swedish winter, preferring to travel abroad to warmer countries on assignments. He was forced to face his winter 'depressions' three years ago, when he was commissioned by Goteborgs Posten.
'It was one of those rare, very free jobs - "just travel around the country and do what you want". There was lots of time to shoot and an okay budget, but the first weeks were a nightmare, and I just couldn't find a way to photograph in the winter. For the first time in my life I considered asking the magazine to find another photographer. But suddenly something happened. I found a way and worked like crazy for two weeks. The tension was good, and if I hadn't had a deadline to work towards maybe I would have just gone back home to bed. But I decided to work more freely - faster, and more intuitively.
'Two years later, I happened to look at the negatives again, and I found some interesting photographs that I hadn't printed. So I decided to go on. In the meantime, I had also edited a book and exhibition called I Love Boras! (about the town where he grew up) featuring never-used pictures from 1989 to 1996. And in the pictures I had rejected I found something. When I made Country Beside Itself in 1993 I was looking for other kinds of images, filled with action, but also controlled. This time I used the pictures that I had found too ugly, too beautiful, too silly or just too boring.
'The following projects, Office and Home, were even more formal. So, inspired by my old negatives, I photographed Vinter in a more free way. I tried to take in everything I saw and to react to that, meeting a lot of people and saying yes to everything. And it led me to some very interesting meetings.'
In print and online
Vinter is published by Steidl (ISBN: 978-3-86521-497-3), priced £27.50. Lars Tunbjork is represented by Agence Vu. For further information visit Agence Vu.
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