My main accomplishment this year of course was my new photo book, Shinrin-yoku. It was followed by a number of exhibitions and artist talks, but many other exiting things also happened during the year.
Shinrin-yoku
The now awarded photo book was released in september with a vernissage at Galleri FOTOverket. First to enter the exhibition and get one of the books was Östergötland’s Lord Lieutenant Carl Fredrik Graf!
The project started already in 2022. One of the first things I did was to sign a designer and a preface writer. To get both Mats Andersson and Anders Geidemark onboard was a sign that the project would succeed! When Region Östergötland awarded me a scholarshop for artistic development and quality I was even more convinced of success!
Exhibition
The year started with a continued exhibition of In the twilight zone at Galleri FOTOverket. At Planket in Stockholm the visitors got to see a preview of Shinrin-yoku and when it was released it first was shown at Galleri FOTOverket and then the week after in Vadstena castle during Vadstena konstrund.
Then I mixed the two exhibitions into Forest bath in the twilight zone. Two different versions of this exhibition was shown at the same time by Galleri Sander in Norrköping and Galleri FOTOverket south of Linköping. In total more than 50 meters of wall was displaying my images! If you wanted to see the complete exhibition you had to visit them both since they were showing different images. In Norrköping two major culture events took place during, both the yearly Kulturnatten (Culture night) when “everyone” in Norrköpings head to town to enjoy culture and the photo festival Spegla which was resurrected after a pandemic induced pause.
Photo competitions
For 2023 I intended to have a focus on the new book and have a pause from photo competitions. Those who follow me on social media know that I couldn’t stay away, and the comment “Congrats, again!” was quite common. Several images from Shinrin-youk was awarded in e.g., European Photography Awards and New York Photography Awards. The book was awarded a bronze in Budapest International Foto Awards!
One stormy day I stopped at lake Vättern and created the image Stormy weekend. I submitted it to GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Yearm, one of the major nature photography competitions. The images was awarded a Highly commended (all winners except the top one in the 8 categories get this achievement) in the category Nature’s studio. To be chosen among the many thousand images that are submitted is one of my major photography accomplishments! All the awarded images are turned into an exhibition that is touring Europe and it seems it so far at least have been shown in Lünen, München, London and Montier-en-Der.
One fun thing that really picked up this year was artist talks. I’ve done a couple of different variants during the year based on my two books. I’ve visited Åtvidaberg, Bankeryd, Linköping, Norrköping and Hallstavik on my tour this year.
Swedish photography magazine Fotosidan Magasin picked up on Shinrin-yoku and placed a couple of spreads just at the startof number 6, gilded by the golden birch forest Yellow on the cover!
But what about images, was there any created this year? Yes, the last images for the book had to be created and then I of course visited nature quite frequently.
One of the highlights of the year was a visit to northern Finland. The book Shinrin-yoku is to a large extent about the problems of our world and one of the major issues is the biodiversity. The Swedish debate circles around how few wolves we should have, what the value of the trees are and so on. It’s very little about how important nature is as nature. To symbolize this I wanted to have an image of a wolf. Of course we have wolves in Sweden but actually finding one and getting it in front of the camera is really hard. In Finland though there is a place where it’s quite straightforward. Getting images of bear and wolverine was a nice bonus!
