• How did you become involved in your art?

I am absolutely useless with a pencil or paintbrush but have always have had so many creative ideas and images in my head. I simply had to find a way to express them. My father has always been an enthusiastic photographer so it kind of developed from there.

• What have been the trials and tribulations of your photography career?

The most challenging part for most people who wants to survive in a creative business is learning to cope with the business end of it all. Learning to think business as well as art is really hard. It came as quite a chock I tell you to learn just how expensive an exhibition really is.

• Where do you think you have succeeded or failed?

I am very pleased with having begun (you never finish this) in finding my own voice. I still struggle to limit myself and not try to cover quite so many topics at the same time.

• What or who are your influences and how has they/have that influenced you?

I get inspired by nature and gardens and very rough industrial environments. I enjoy looking at other photographers’ work but I rarely get my inspiration from them.

• What equipment and mode of printing do you use?

I usually shoot with a Canon DSLR and a 50 mm lens. I have other lenses to of course but I create approx. 80% of my work with the 50mm. Most is displayed digitally but when I print I use a PRO-lab, Crimson.

• How would you describe the current industry trends?

To many photographers (and critics alike) who are more interested in THE PROJECT than in the result. By this I mean that it might be fun for the photographer to create a project shooting say a 50 year old white male from every state in his kitchen. The photographer and the critics then focus on the project; how difficult was it to find all those men, were there any significant differences in the kitchen supplies etc. etc. The fact that it might be quite boring to look at more than 50 white men in kitchens doesn’t really count.

On the plus side, trend-wise, is that photography never has been as hot as it is now. Even the big auction houses have understood it, so from that perspective this is a great time to be a photographer.

• What advice would you have for emerging photographers?

Develop your style and THINK BUSINESS. If you don’t sell you’ll turn up as a waitress with photography as a hobby rather than a photographer. Approach potential buyers. Meet as many potential buyers as you possibly can. Be realistic and make a business plan.

• I am currently trying to work on finding my own sense of style and cohesiveness. What are some things that helped you find your style?

Thousands and thousands of photos. After some years I have learned what works for me and what doesn’t.

• In your website gallery for “country” there were a few photographs like the leaves and flowers that were out of focus but still very aesthetic. What kind of methods did you use for those photos?

Thank you! I prefer to make this kind of images on clear days in early fall. Where I live the light is spectacular at that time of the year. To create these images I usually shake the camera and use rather slow shutter speeds. I use the display to preview the images frequently. Often you need to shake the camera much less than you think at the beginning. The difficult part is to choose what images to save. The only method here is trusting the gut feeling.

• I am oftentimes photographing in familiar places because I am a little scared to venture into a different place. What kind of things motivates you to go out to take photographs?

I am quite the opposite in fact. When working on inspiration I find it easier to photograph non-familiar places. Simply because I have seen the familiar places so many times I tend to stop seeing them. But the trick is to ALWAYS carry the camera with you and if you don’t have the camera at least use your cellphone as a camera. And practice, practice, practice. If you end up with a bunch of crappy images at the end of the day, so what. Delete them and move on. There is now short cut. After some time it becomes a second nature to photograph wherever you are and you’ll discover you have moved outside of your comfort zone.

You can read the article here as well but a visit to the PWP site is always worthwhile (and there you will be able to see some illustrations to the article as well).

What is happening in the European scene of photography? The short answer is: a lot. A complete answer is hardly possible to give even if one tried, but let us at least catch a glimpse of a much diversified contemporary scene. First and foremost, one has to remember that Europe is anything but homogenous. It is a continent put together by hugely different countries. What is a fact in Barcelona may be only a rumor in Berlin. Even so, there are trends joining together the entire continent, and one such trend is spelled ‘photography’.

Documentary photography has had a long and proud history, but it was really not until the 1990s that photography was truly accepted in the art collages as well. A generation change among the teachers combined with better equipment gave way for the budding growth of contemporary art photography. In the catalog of contemporary national artists, “Swedish Art Now – 85 Artists Born after 1960” (published in 2004), 25 of the listed artists are photographers and more than 50 % are women.  Some, like Maria Miesenberger and Charlotte Gyllenhammar also use other media such as sculpture. Others, like Anneè Olofsson and Maria Friberg, prefer to act as directors and let others snap the actual picture. In the 1990s, a large percentage of the women photographers used their works to explore gender issues. This is almost never seen today.

Never is the renewed energy of European photography more evident than during the European Month of Photography.  This, the biggest festival dedicated to the promotion of photography in Europe, was first held in 2004 in Berlin, Paris and Vienna. Since 2006, Bratislava, Luxembourg, Moscow and Rome also have been involved. For the fourth edition of the Month of Photography in 2010, more than 120 institutions, including museums, cultural institutes and embassies, as well as photographic colleges, galleries and project spaces, presented over 250 exhibitions and events relating to historic and contemporary photography. The fourth edition presented itself as a festival in transition. This time the “month” of photography lasted for six weeks, starting in mid October. The biggest change, however, was the experiment of confronting all participating institutions with a mandatory set theme. The objective was to have all the exhibitions and events focused on a single topic, so as to make the festival more prominent in the public eye and give it a higher profile.

The theme of the Berlin version of the 4th Month of Photography “Modern times, New Pictures” pointed to the decisive influence that the medium of photography (and along with it, more recent graphic media as well) has had on the modern age, from industrialization right up to the present day. Not only did Modernism give birth to photography – photography also, in a reversal of roles, made an active contribution to the dissemination and strengthening of certain aspects of Modernism. This connection between photography and modernization was chosen as a leitmotif with reference to four selected fields:  life and lifestyle in the big city (urbanization and street photography), fashion photography, photography and science, and new pictorial worlds – new techniques. The selected fields reappeared in the festival in the form of historic and – even more importantly – contemporary samples of the art.

In Sweden, the contemporary museum for photographic arts, ‘Fotografiska,’ opened its doors in May 2010 and before the end of the summer had counted more than 250,000 visitors. The huge success more or less forced the National Museum of Modern Arts, ‘Moderna Muséet,’ to rethink and move their photographic collection from the basement where it had been hidden for the last few years, to a more prominent place. And the new directors, Daniel Birnbaum and Ann-Sofi Noring, have declared they will launch a new presentation of the museum’s photographic collection. Photography will gradually be given a more prominent position, and will fill the entire exhibition of the permanent collection this autumn to the end of the year.

“We want to show the museum collection from a new perspective, but also to present an alternative art history, not one that is truer, but simply another perspective. We have noted a strong demand to see more of the museum’s large collection of photography among our visitors. With this venture, we hope to contribute in a way that only we can, and to give the public what they have a right to expect from us, namely an historic dimension. We are also intensifying our research into photographic images,” says Daniel Birnbaum, director of Moderna Museet.