Understanding or ignoring power?

For those who know me know that one of my weaknesses is my tendency to speak to much, to often, and at times without thought. Sometimes I feel like photography can be quite similar. The meaning of an image, the end result, is often outside our grasp and thus most of the time ignored by us photographers. We might ask ourselves different questions: Will this image be understood at all? Does it point the reader towards what we try to say or show? Is it to easy or to hard to understand? Rarely do we ask what structures of power do this image promote? Do I as a photographer implicitly or explicitly advance a certain agenda through my work? I say most times because there are obviously a plenitude of photographers who struggle with what their images show and what they ultimately reveal of ourselves and the milieu we find ourselves in.

Nevertheless, it is not only us photographers who tend to be thoughtless or ignorant of what we say and what it really implies. That hidden meaning that so treacherously works against what we hope to achieve is ubiquitous. Asim Rafiqui so eloquently writes about it in his post Saying 'Fuck Off' In Muslim And Why I Say It So Often.


And from that notion to this: Congratulations Niklas Larsson for winning Scanpix's Stora Fotopris! You're the man!




Max Calner has spent seven of his twentytwo years locked away in different instituitions. He was first taken into custody at the age of thirteen and the list of institutions he has since been transfered between is almost as diverse as his rapsheet. My conflicting emotions surrounding the double juxtapostions of child/victim and adult/perpetrator led me to the idea of this diptych. Max himself today thinks it was a good thing that he got taken into custody. He only wishes he was taken into care instead. As alway if you understand Swedish you can read the full story at Fokus