I didn't even know that I made this kind of photography / series. I call them "Abstracts" - because... well, the images look abstract. Must have been some sort of experimenting at home. Was I bored ? Perhaps, maybe. But also curious. The past year at Johan Westin, the photo studio, did give me inputs and inspiration in my own field. It did color some of what I did, both in the darkroom while printing, as well the way I looked at people during portraits, changed my type of lightning, varied more compared to 1993.
1995 was a strange year.
Neither friend nor foe. Or both. And yet also a bit failed on a personal level. At the same time filled with passion in photography, new projects. Overall - a mixed bag, a "in the middle" year. Searching, angry after the break with Olof T. Actually, I was deeply angry - which scared me sometimes. Noticing that it almost overtook me from within. More than i liked, and i didn't fully understand the intensity of it.
I didn't know what to do with it. Where to put it. How to transform it. It was just hanging there like a disco boll in my stomach, with sharp knives rotating.
At times it felt empty.
Along the road of the year however
- things felt a lot more passionate, creative (!), at the same time I was also a lot out and about - where dancing was a large part of my party life at night. Clearly interesting, and I developed a sense of becoming more outgoing, not to hold back so much like i used to. Perhaps also more sexual ? Perhaps, maybe. But there was something else. My relationship to sensual / nude photography. Not that I ever really was deeply into it - but the sensual part attracted me a lot. And somehow, I got more open about it. With myself. With others. And they with me. In photography.
I almost forgot how creative 1995 was in terms of photography !!!
Lots of portraits in my "home studio".
Stockholm Gay Night life, peaked in the 90s

It was mid 90s, and never ever has Stockholm gay life, had so many place to go to. It was as if things exploded since early 90s, and all of the sudden, there where many places to dance. Earlier in the 80s, not even two discos could exist for gays, because when a new one opened, everybody would go there - and the previous one would close its doors. I always thought that Gay night life was poor during the 80s.
While in the mid 90s, it exploded with a never seen variation. It was the decade where people started to become "Me, myself and I". Glossy, bold, into everything. But somehow it also was here where the self-fame, self-orientation and selfishness started to grow stronger among people in general, and in particularly among gay people. It was at the peak of so much party time, when things started to go down the drain - ever so slowly.
By 1997, dance places for gays started rapidly to become fewer. The party was over as we closed in onto year 2000.
|