“Wow, that was a ticket into people’s lives!” Johan Bävman an aha experience during training at Bishop Arno.
Photo: Emma Larsson
A crucial moment – more to come – calls photographer Johan Bävman an event Biskops Arno; one day when he realized photography’s power.
– The class was awakened, after breakfast was driven us to a crossroads in the middle of nowhere and our teacher announced that we would be back in the same place for four hours and then performing various photographic tasks. During the hours I eat seven kinds of cookies, to be part of attempts to repair a power line that has fallen and talk to seniors. Wow, that was a ticket into people’s lives!
From the sixteen Johan worked Bävman extra Ystad Allehanda. The parents had come as green-weigher to Österlen, he grew up near Fyledalen and drove mopeds to high school in Tomelilla.
– Someone old Durst was in the basement of the school, says Bävman.
One and another photographer’s career has probably originated in an old magnifier brand Durst.
– We needed to be four to arrange the student’s choice of photography and we managed to get together. Ulrika, an interested teacher, helped us and we photographed flowers and stuff.
In retrospect, photographer Bävmans profession is perceived as written in the stars. Not only because of Dursten in the basement, he had parents with arts programs, and both father and grandfather were hobbyist. External opportunities, but internal forces seem to have been more important. Each photographer has their reasons to engage in the life where one stops the flow of time which inexorably Wells and puts it to the picture stories. Bävman is aware of what it was in him that drew, he returns often to the social surrounding photo journalism, communication and confirmation, he soon received.
– It worked decently in school, probably because I managed to hide by certain charm that I was not so shrewd in the usual subjects. But in photography, I had MVG, I was good at.
Ystad Allehanda had, as well as many other local newspapers, “picture of the day”: the photographer’s own space. Picture of the day could stand for itself without text and photographers competed to put the best image.
– One day, the editor ‘this is the best’. I was sixteen then, and it was my picture. I had taken the best image of the day. A good feeling.
Another queue sense is the one that assumes that Bävman is the Swedish photographer who received the most attention ever, worldwide, in the shortest time, for a series of photographs he took from 2014 until now: “Swedish Dads”.
See also: Johan Bävman depicting parental leave, fathers day
Superintendent Merja Diaz and exhibition techniques Anders Alm plan; the photographs will hang in an order that is both obvious and surprising. Exhibitors around Sweden wanted the premiere of the “Swedish Dads”, but Bävman chose Malmö Museum in his hometown.
Photo: Emma Larsson
Together with Mikael Windstedt on Drewex goes Johan Bävman carefully through each copy. Photographs where the father checked his screen discovered Bävman was more sensitive to the depicted. Probably because of the stereotype that has spread about the parents and monitors.
Photo: Emma Larsson
The day of the interview , we are in Malmö museums Slottsholmen, January 23, the exhibition of 45 photographs on parental leave Swedish fathers. Construction workers build, exhibition space is not clear.
– Can we go on the floor?
It can be, Bävman discuss with museum technicians Anders Alm and curator Merja Diaz of lights and screens. Nervous?
– Well, that’s their thing now, I have no catastrophizing but want it to be good.
After primary school became the media school in Ystad Bävman and eventually a period as assistant to a few fashion photographers. A world of studio flashes and Hasselblad cameras. For a while footed he was not at all but went snowboarding and worked in the bar.
– But I always came back to Ystad Allehanda.
2003 2004 he foto education at East Grevieparken.
– From there on I got into both Biskops Arnos photojournalist education and Photo School in Gamleby. (The latter is geared towards advertising and fashion). Photographer Per Anders Jorgensen lectured at East Grevieparken and I asked him for advise about what training I should choose. Jorgensen glanced at my work and said Bishop Arno. Right, of course. Without people feel pictures dumb to me.
From the series “Albino – In the shadow of the sun”. Two girls at the school for the blind Mintindo in Mwansa. “Children with albinism living in appalling conditions, but when I got there, I knew I ville- portray all the bright stories that are there. I think the viewer will need it to be able to understand a story. Children are children everywhere, that I discovered. There was laughter and good friendship there, despite the partly cruel existence. “© Johan Bävman
Photo: Johan Bävman
And all is people. Some of Bävmans most famous images is the children and young people with albinism in Tanzania, on maternal mortality in Uganda and the project “the outskirts” depicting those who remain in rural areas. Bävmans images include sociology and psychology in modern bildjournalistiks aesthetics. This is not the black and white world of alienation that has become known by names such as Christer Strömholm and Anders Petersen. While their imagery is odd people are Bävmans more of ordinary people in unusual or difficult situations.
Buzz Feed, the American media giant online with an estimated traffic of 162 million unique visitors per day, picked up the “Swedish dads” and the project was spread globally. The photographs have turned strangely wide: from magazines like Cosmopolitan to serious daily newspapers in several countries, from celebrity blogger for the politically influential, and so on. Bävman suddenly found himself interviewed by the BBC, and similar variables and was regarded as the man’s expert and representative of gender equality. In Almedalen, at a seminar organized TCO, he questions: “How is man’s role changed in recent generations?”
– What do you answer? I was not quite comfortable in that role.
In December He TT’s major photography prize for dad pictures and the interest is still on the rise.
From the series “Swedish dads”. Goran Sevelin, 27, took a study break for ten months to take care of her daughter Liv. © Johan Bävman
Photo: Johan Bävman
“Swedish dads” represents something whose time has come: the idea of the parental leave, the father who takes care for their children in the same way that mothers traditionally done. But there are already well-images of fathers and children? Bävmans is different.
– A month, I sat and answered e-mails that the images generated, one was from a father in Calcutta. ‘Exactly, so here it is,’ he wrote, and felt touched and seen. The estimate makes me particularly happy.
The daily life of the that leave is not only children without cleaning, washing and cooking, is hardly something for the faint of heart and it shows in the images that are full of love, hard work and fatigue.
– You take care of another human being, one that would immediately die if you did not take that responsibility.
Eva Raven is responsible for the design and communication at Malmö Museums. Now both she and the photographer leaned over, for example, the image of a Swedish father Goran Sevelin, on maternity leave with her daughter Liv, which he carries in a sling. Along with Diaz talk about the layout, banners and printed materials.
– It is important to my self-portrait hangs on the side, so I do not become one of Swedish dads. The colors remind not about Swedish flag?
The pressure goes in the yellow and blue but in completely different tones than the typically Swedish.
From the series “Epaland”. Magnus and Mattias Ahlin his EPA tractor. “These images are like my own childhood and youth in the country. I went away, leaving my village, and when I returned I saw the other things, or perhaps the same things but in a new way. The age as the guys are in, the EPA age, between adults and children, is a time when one’s identity is marked. “© Johan Bävman
Photo: Johan Bävman
From the series “The Outskirts”. Lars Nolin in Vilhelmina. “In this project, I wanted to depict urbanization and how it affects individuals who remain in rural areas when companies, services and people disappear. I was impressed by them, proud people with strong roots in their field. “© Johan Bävman
Photo: Johan Bävman
A successful year, but almost nothing is the walk in the park you might think. “Shit, there’s no caller” thought Bävman few years ago and panicked unless he photographed a few weeks. The project began as something long term to keep up with during the time he worked on a freelance career. Fathers he found through social media, set pieces on the town and dad cafes.
– What will it be? people asked. I said it would be a book but did not know if it was.
Some fathers he portrayed has not wanted to be with, it is sensitive way you rendered as a parent, an observer sees something else than the depicted.
– One of the pictures seemed keen for the whole series, and I tried to persuade her father to have to have it with but he did not.
Many creative professions, you can make success but not a career, to be seen is not the same as money.
Newly called a French prestigious newspaper with a difficult photo assignments, they did so badly paid that it would nearly cost me to take it.
profession’s condition is changed as the media done it. Bävman was employed as a photo journalist at Sydsvenskan 2008-2012. During that time he won three of his four awards in the Swedish Picture of the Year and a prize in the World Press Photo of the series about children with albinism first published in Sydsvenskan and became his breakthrough to an international audience.
– Both my wife and I lost our permanent jobs simultaneously. Around the same time, we Viggo and my mother died. A difficult time, we decided to start a new life.
Everything has its time and parents’ lives inspires him.
– They trained in fine arts at the College of Arts, became a teacher in the image and textiles but in middle age wagered the most on the free careers and succeeded mom textile artist and father as a set designer.
– If you are freelance so you are replaceable and it is painful and restless. One of the best freelance photographers I know training to be an electrician, I think photographers generally think of alternatives. But the change is for the better, you do not want to end up in one of the security role and I’m aslycklig for my privileged situation.
Should young people wager on the profession?
– Want to earn money so no, but it’s difficult to advise someone. My job has given me so much as a man, I have changed for the better, have an understanding of people’s lives and access to hidden worlds but you must be enterprising.
boo! Johan Bävman with her son Viggo, he was on parental leave.
Photo: Emma Larsson
Bävman believe in a partially restored market for photographers.
– Several clients have discovered that it does not work with genre pictures, Reader Images, or that the person who writes shoot. Not if you want quality.
Some of the insights he had come out of the need to make ethical considerations; an episode that still searching Bävman is when he photographed children with albinism at the school for the blind in Tanzania. Because of the impact that the superstition surrounding albinos be (they are considered magical and cutting off their limbs) so they lived at the school, which was fenced and guarded.
– Oh, so nice light, I thought a morning and suggested to the children that we would go out and play football so we took us outside the fence. Someone pointed out later that it was stupid. Yes of course. Someone could have been kidnapped and burned. I had my own perspective – so damn beautiful light. It is easier to pedal error in situations in which you are unfamiliar with the context.
Bävman is way to check the prints for the exhibition, in a few days he shall proceed to Switzerland to photograph the Swiss dads. When Moment, the photo agency he belonged, chose to partner with an American agency, he left it. Now he is free photographer, resident in the documentary tradition. He describes a favorite, one of British photographer Martin Parr as he took in Brighton: a chaotic glass slipper, the photograph is taken from inside the glass booth and the teenager who works there turning with a speaking glance toward camera.
– So damn much reality that image contains.
The same applies Bävmans photographs. Superintendent Diaz browsing through the book of Swedish fathers surrounded by home, family and children, and said: “Exactly so here it is.”
– If you are a photographer with a mission, you can tap and get entering, You can get close to people.
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