Photo by Viktor Gårdsäter

I was in for a bit of a surprise after clicking a link from Twitter to Swedish photographer’s Viktor Gårdsäter’s website. Looking at his series “In Search” I was sceptical at first. It’s not like the first photo in the sequence is bad, but Flickr has made me come to associate flat contrast with hipsters and Flickr Explore. The second photo, being a night flash shot in an open area of a man smoking, rather compounded my initial expression. By the third photo I was paying attention, however, and after the fourth photo it would have taken quite a bit to turn me away.

Apart from the flat contrasts in most of the photos, besides the flash shots, and the tendency towards a centred composition, it’s hard to pinpoint what ties the “In Search” photos together. Perhaps the title is a clue to that but, in any case, they do seem to fit together. Another thing I feel that they have in common is… well, the “Swedishness”. I’m not even sure all the photos are made in Sweden, but clearly the majority is and I struggle to remember a collection of photos which invoked this feeling more strongly in me.

As for picking a single photo to represent the whole series I might almost as well have picked one at random. However, I felt the one I picked, here above, showed well some of the things I mentioned as being a (mostly) common thread through the series. It also has what I might best call a sense of atmosphere, which would be another commonality as well as how it invokes my curiosity. The subject also seems to radiate a feeling of confusion which is almost palpable. I’m almost confused myself as to whether to describe the photo humorous or sad.