Magnus Cederlund just made a book SKIN CLOSE publisher is journal-photobooks.com Born in Stockholm. Since 1984, Magnus Cederlund has portrayed people living on the edge alcoholics, drug abusers, homeless people, and prostitutes, as well as people who don’t fit in the categories of society
Sweden –
KT: How did you get into photography? When/what was your first encounter with photography?
MC: I was living in Stockholm 30 years ago and a friend showed me “Café Lehmitz” by Anders Petersen, and that was it. I just had to begin doing something like that. So I got the equipment and started clicking. Concerts, the street, the subway, parties, travels. It’s really simple, not complicated. I saw something good and wanted to do it, so I started from where I was at.
KT: With your photographic approach, you have tried to present people living on the edge ranging from the intimacy of the situations, the confronted gestures and the direct gaze of the persons. What is your intent behind photographing the poverty and hardships of a particular section of the society?
MC: I hear two questions in this one. The range from street photography to domestic scenes – as well as from direct gazes to situations where people are in action, non-conscious of the camera – that varies the sense of subjectivity felt from the book, I guess. It is like this: the private and self-conscious would feel too hard pressed if every photograph in the book was like that; and likewise, we would not like it as much if we always stayed at the distance of the portrait of a mere situation. As in our own lives, by the way, we require the introspection as well as self-forgetting. It needs to be said though, that this has in no way been the intention from the start. No, to begin with, all that mattered was good photos, and in putting them together it was all done through intuitive taste. But now this is my interpretation.
Then the second part of the question: why this section of society? Well, I photograph all kinds of people, whenever someone’s looks trigger curiosity I approach it as a photographer. I can’t help it. My children, friends, rock musicians on the scene, backstage, whatever. And it just so happens that people on the edge fit my taste so very much. One side of it is that the now which we all bring with us tends to suggest more of a story than the case is with most people. Another side to it is the fact that it can be said to be the shadow of society, yet they aren’t paid much attention to – maybe they receive mentioning, sure, in the news and everywhere… But personal, authentic attention is more or less absent, and I think that is the reason I am drawn to the rawness of this “section of the society”. Of course there is sympathy in it too, but in the end, it is not journalism or activism but an aesthetic enterprise, so the inspiration, not sympathy, is paramount. I am just glad that my taste thus also seems to take into concern social issues.
