Exhibition dates: 5th December 2013 – 30th March 2014
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Unknown man
c. 1995
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
A photographer who I previously have known very little about….
Excellent portraits, with strong use of close up, chiaroscuro and diagonal, horizontal and vertical elements within the picture frame. The camera is usually positioned on the same level or just below the proponent – never shooting down on the person – which gives the portraits a monumental feel. The tight cropping and framing of the face by hands and arms is magnificent (for example, the hands and arms of Sara Lidman, 1967 below; and the hand resting under the chin of Hans Alfredson, Reprint 2012 below), as is the positioning of the body within the picture frame, Self Portrait as The White Clown (Reprint 2012, below). The attitude of the body, as in the portrait of photographer Rolf Winquist (Reprint 2012, below), adds an element of psychological enquiry into the presence that the artist evokes from his sitters.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
.
Many thankx to the Nationalmuseum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger view of the image.
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden
1996
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Hans Thorwid/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Niklas Ek, dancer, actor
Nd, reprint 2012
Gelatin silver print
60.5 x 50.5cm
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Niklas Ek, born 1943, is a Swedish premiere dancer. He is the son of actor Anders Ek and choreographer Birgit Cullberg and brother of the director Mats Ek and actor Malin Ek. He has been active in the Cullberg Ballet and the Royal Opera.
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Angela Davis
c. 1972
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organisation working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.
Her research interests are in feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan’s request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers’ August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Tomas Tranströmer
2006
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (born 15 April 1931) is a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems capture the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer’s work is also characterised by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routine of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. Indeed, he has been described as a Christian poet.
Tranströmer is acclaimed as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since the Second World War. Critics have praised his poetry for its accessibility, even in translation.His poetry has been translated into over 60 languages. He is the recipient of the 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Fantini, clown
Nd
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Nelson Mandela
1990
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Tove Jansson
1967
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Tove Marika Jansson (Finland; 9 August 1914 – 27 June 2001) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. For her contribution as a children’s writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and then Paris. Her first solo art exhibition was in 1943.
At the same time, she was writing short stories and articles for publication, as well as creating the graphics for book covers and other purposes. She continued to work as an artist for the rest of her life, alongside her writing. Jansson is best known as the author of the Moomin books for children. The first such book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, appeared in 1945, though it was the next two books, Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll, published in 1946 and 1948 respectively, that brought her fame. Starting with the semi-autobiographical Bildhuggarens dotter (Sculptor’s Daughter) in 1968, she wrote six novels and five books of short stories for adults.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Evert Taube, author, singer, artist
Reprint 2012
Gelatin silver print
60.5 x 50.5 cm
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Evert Taube (1890-1976) was a Swedish author, artist, composer and singer. He is widely regarded as one of Sweden’s most respected musicians and the foremost troubadour of the Swedish ballad tradition in the 20th century.
“On 5 December, an exhibition on the life and work of photographer Hans Gedda will open at Nationalmuseum. Close to 140 works will be on show in this retrospective covering the period from the 1950s to the present day. Gedda’s celebrated portraits of Angela Davis, Andy Warhol and Nelson Mandela will appear alongside famous Swedes such as Olof Palme, Birgit Nilsson and Jonas Gardell.
Hans Gedda (born 1942) has long been recognised as one of Sweden;s most notable photographers. The coming retrospective will feature some 140 works: a mix of portraits, still lifes and semi-documentary images. The sliding scale on which the various genres are classified invites questions such as what constitutes a portrait, and what makes it different from other motifs. The featured works will cover Gedda’s long and productive artistic career from the 1950s to date.
Hans Gedda displayed a precocious talent for photography, making his artistic debut while still a teenager. The exhibition will therefore include several early works never previously exhibited. It will then trace Gedda’s ongoing development, from his student days with Teddy Aarni in Eskilstuna through the period he spent as assistant to Rolf Winquist at Ateljé Uggla. Gedda’s breakthrough came in 1967 with his portraits of Sara Lidman and Tove Jansson. As one of the dominant components of Gedda’s oeuvre, portraits will make up a major part of the exhibition. Visitors will encounter well-known images of Angela Davis, Andy Warhol, Nelson Mandela and famous Swedes such as Olof Palme, Birgit Nilsson and Jonas Gardell. In these portrayals, time and space are non-existent; everything is pared down. Examples of closeness and distance alike can be seen. One of the most innovative works is a portrait of King Carl XVI Gustaf.
Gedda has worked as a commercial photographer all his life, frequently changing perspectives and using the same models in his artistic projects. His pictures of older men with colourful personalities were created in parallel with jeans advertisements. Another example is Gedda’s circus images, commissioned by Cirkus Scott, which mix portrait photography with semi-documentary photojournalism. Since these are among the most fascinating of Gedda’s works, separate sections will be dedicated to them. As far as self-portraits are concerned, Gedda has employed a variety of motifs as reflections of himself. He has appeared both as a white clown and as a still life in the form of scrap metal parts. In this way, he continues to experiment to this day with a sliding scale covering a number of genres such as portraiture, nature studies and still life…
To coincide with the exhibition, a lavishly illustrated catalogue will be published in Swedish and English. It will contain two essays by Magnus Olausson and Eva-Lena Karlsson, the exhibition curators, which will draw extensively on numerous conversations with Gedda.
The exhibition will open on 5 December 2013 in Nationalmuseum’s temporary venue at Konstakademien, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, and will run until 30 March 2014.
Press release from the Nationalmuseum website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Addi, the White-Face Clown
c. 1967
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Andy Warhol
1976
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Cornelis Vreeswijk
1984
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Cornelis Vreeswijk (8 August 1937 – 12 November 1987) was a singer-songwriter, poet and actor born in IJmuiden in the Netherlands. He emigrated to Sweden with his parents in 1949 at the age of twelve. He was educated as a social worker and hoped to become a journalist, but became increasingly involved in music, performing at events for students. His idiosyncratic humour and social engagement is still gaining him new fans. Cornelis Vreeswijk is often considered as one of the most influential and successful troubadours in Sweden. In 2010 a Swedish drama film, called Cornelis, was made about his life. It was directed by Amir Chamdin.
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Still Life
Nd
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Jonas Gardell
c. 1992
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Jonas Gardell (born 2 November 1963 in Enebyberg, Stockholm County), is a Swedish novelist, playwright, screenwriter and comedian. He is the brother of religion scholar Mattias Gardell. He is well known for his books and plays in all of Scandinavia and has also published in Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland.
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Man with a Cigarette and Stick
1995-1997
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Ove Ekberg
1955
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Sara Lidman
1967
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Sara Lidman (30 December 1923 – 17 June 2004) was a Swedish writer. Born in the village Missenträsk in the northern parts of Skellefteå Municipality, Lidman was raised in the Västerbotten region of northern Sweden. She studied at the University of Uppsala where her studies were interrupted by her receiving tuberculosis. She achieved her first great success with the novel Tjärdalen (The Tar Still). In this novel and in Hjortronlandet she depicts themes like alienation and loneliness. In this and her following three novels, she described the difficult conditions for poor farmers in the northern Swedish province Västerbotten during the nineteenth century.
Her innovative style was influenced by dialects and biblical language. In connection with her first four novels, she wrote a number of texts with strong political content. She engaged in protest against the Vietnam War (including traveling to North Vietnam and participating in the Russell Tribunal) and apartheid in South Africa. She also supported the miners strikes in North Sweden and was active in the Communist movement and after that in the environmentalist movement. After 1977, she wrote seven additional novels that dealt with the colonisation of northern Sweden.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Rolf Winquist, photographer
Reprint 2012
Gelatin silver print
60.5 x 50.5cm
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
The photographer Rolf Winquist (Swedish, 1910-68) was for many years the head of Ateljé Uggla, a popular studio in Stockholm. Known chiefly for its portraits, the showcase studio on Kungsgatan attracted professionals and amateurs alike. Generations of aspiring young photographers sought out Winquist. He did not provide formal instruction, preferring to give his students the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills through practical tasks. Winquist’s artistic roots were in the pictorialism movement of the early 20th century, which sought to elevate the status of photography and gain recognition as an art form. However, Winquist did not stop there, but went on to produce experimental works of a surrealist nature as well as street photography.
Text from the Nationalmuseum website [Online] Cited 24/03/2014 no longer available online.
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Hans Alfredson, author, actor, entertainer, film director
Reprint 2012
Gelatin silver print
60.5 x 50.5cm
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Folke “Hasse” Alfredson (1931-2017) was a Swedish actor, film director, writer and comedian. He was born in Malmö, Sweden. He was known for his collaboration with Tage Danielsson (the two of them often referred to as Hasseåtage). His most celebrated contribution to their brand of humorist humanism was his ability to extemporise wildly absurd comic situations, for example in the so-called Lindeman dialogues. At the 11th Guldbagge Awards, he won the Best Director award for his 1975 film Egg! Egg! A Hardboiled Story. His 1981 film The Simple-Minded Murder was entered into the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. He also wrote a string of books, some intensely comic in a Monty Python style, some equally intensely tragic, some a mixture of the two.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Self Portrait as The White Clown
Reprint 2012
Gelatin silver print
60.5 x 50.5cm
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Margaretha Krook
1971
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Margaretha Krook (15 October 1925 – 7 May 2001) was a Swedish stage and film actress. She won the Eugene O’Neill Award in 1974. In 1976, she won the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress for the film Release the Prisoners to Spring.
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Max von Sydow
c. 1973
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Max von Sydow
1993
© Hans Gedda
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Ernst Hugo Järegård, Shakespeare/actor
1993
© Hans Gedda
From 1962 Ernst Hugo Järegård was an actor in Sweden’s prominent Royal Dramatic Theatre, where he came to perform a number of much celebrated parts: his eccentric Hitler in Schweik in the Second World War by Bertolt Brecht (1963), Estragon in the legendary 1966 Dramaten-staging of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Thersites in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida 1967, Orgon in Molière’s Tartuffe 1971, Hjalmar Ekdahl in Ingmar Bergman’s 1972 production of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, Nero in Jean Racine’s Britannicus (1974), a spot-on portrayal of August Strindberg in play Tribadernas natt (The Night of the Tribades) by Per Olov Enquist, the title role in Richard III by Shakespeare (1980) and the extremely creepy – and slightly perverted – boss Sven in VD (“CEO”) by Stig Larsson in 1985, among others…
Järegård gained international attention when he took on the role of Doctor Helmer in Lars von Trier’s highly acclaimed mini-series Riget and Riget II (aka The Kingdom I & II). He also appeared in von Trier’s Europa. He participated in about 20 movies and 40 TV productions: aside from the Riget-series; some of his greatest roles are in the Skånska mord-series, in the 1975 Hasseåtage comedy Släpp fångarne loss, det är vår! (Release the Prisoners to Spring), in the 1962 cult movie Raggargänget, in Kådisbellan (aka The Slingshot) in 1993 and as the pompous old drag queen Ragnar Rönn in the teleplay Cheek to Cheek (written and directed by Jonas Gardell), 1997. Also in 1997 he appeared in CHOCK as the series’ host and presented each episode. Usually he would make elaborate philosophical and mystical statements regarding the plot of each episode.
For his acting work, he was awarded with the Thalia prize (1967) and the Eugene O’Neill Award (1975), two of Sweden’s finest and most prestigious theatre awards.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hans Gedda (Swedish, b. 1942)
Self Portrait (with Cap)
1974
Nationalmuseum, Swedish National Portrait Gallery
Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum
© Hans Gedda
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