Kenneth Gustavsson (photographer)

Kenneth Gustavsson
Kenneth Gustavsson
Born	7 April 1946
Died	21 December 2009 (aged 63)
Nationality	Swedish
Occupation	Photographer
Known for	Saftra photo agency

Kenneth Gustavsson (7 April 1946 – 21 December 2009) was a Swedish photographer.

Career and work

Gustavsson grew up in a suburb north west of Stockholm. Between 1964 and 1967 he studied photography at the Fotoskolan in Stockholm, where the photographer Christer Strömholm was head, at the same time as Anders Petersen.^[1] After graduation in 1967, he and Petersen co-founded the Saftra photo agency (Saftra Reportage Fotografi).

The Swedish photo magazine Foto published Gustavsson's work in the 1960s. Together with Anders Petersen, Gustavsson portrayed the Stockholm slums in an exhibition at the Stockholm City Museum in 1969. After not working in photography for most of the 1970s, a feature in ETC magazine in 1983 revived Gustavsson's career and he went on to complete assignments in Belfast, Chicago, Reykjavik and New York for ETC. In 1984 he was awarded FOTO magazine's Photographer's Price.^[1]

The critic Gerry Badger has said of Gustavsson's work that "it certainly is very post-war, deeply existential and luminously poetic. And, like most good photography, it is a beguiling exploration of the human condition and our relationship with the world."

Exhibitions

Staden i retur, Stockholm City Museum, 1969. With Anders Petersen.
Galleri Gauss, Stockholm, 1984
Just Images. PS1, New York, 1985. Group exhibition.^[1]
Contemporary Black and White West European Photography, 1987. Group exhibition.^[1]
Fotofest, Houston, TX, 1988. Group exhibition.^[1]
150th Anniversary of Photography, Prague, 1989. Group exhibition.^[1]
Indicier (Indications). Kulturhuset, Stockholm, 1996. With Christer Strömholm and Anders Petersen.^[1]
Reality Revisited. Moderna Museet, 2009
See the World. Moderna Museet, 2011
The Magic Bar. Fotografiska museum, Stockholm, 2012. Photographs taken in Sweden, Germany and France from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.
A Way of Life. Moderna Museet, Malmö, 2014^[2]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "Kenneth Gustavsson". LensCulture. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
^ "A Way of Life". Moderna Museet. Archived from the original on 19 March 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2014. Over 300 pieces by 29 photographers are included in the exhibition A Way of Life – Swedish photography from Christer Strömholm until Today. From trailblazing Strömholm, via influential names such as Anders Petersen, Tuija Lindström, Nina Korhonen and Kenneth Gustavsson, to three younger contemporary photographers. The basis for A Way of Life is Moderna Museet's extensive photo collection, and it is about the intimate and subjective tendencies of Swedish photography