Johan Sandberg - The Theatre of Princess Grace

What will you remember of these summer months when you are an adult?

This is the Paris-based Swedish fashion photographer Johan Sandberg's personal project, shot during the summer of 2020 in Southern Sweden - the summer of Covid, escaping lockdown.

From Emma Mattei's essay:
As adults, we can gaze upon those precious summer holiday snapshots taken of us as children and appreciate not only how our bodies and landscapes are illuminated, but also how light manifests itself in a profound way, imbuing the snapshot with an element of magic. This is when something other happens – the sheer luminosity of the image ignites our senses, and we seek to recall specific moments embedded in the cavernous rooms of our memory. We move the furniture around, and if we are lucky, we travel back in time to dreams we had forgotten, to the incandescence of childhood, and rekindle that joyous state of fantasy, where the spaces occupied are just settings for a scene, where objects and artefacts are props for play.
What will Grace remember of these illuminated moments when she is a grown woman? Will she be able to move the furniture of memory and return to these still, laconic summer days in Sweden? In this series of images, this forgotten house, already frozen in time with its dated décor and pastel walls, becomes her playground, but she is not alone, there’s Freja, faithful black dog, and there’s a camera – behind the apparatus is her father, Johan. Yet many photographs transmit moments of discreet documentation, with a sense of trust, or mundanity even, in the presence of the other that is forgotten. Other times the interaction between father and daughter is the energy that binds the image, a direct look, a twirl upon a kitchen table, a patient pose within a single light beam, where a deep sense of collaboration and mutual creation is the overriding impression.
Indeed, one may ask, how also will the father remember this time together? The making of memories with a camera in hand, where the photographer’s eye is keen to direct the image, whilst learning to trust in the other, allowing time to roll by, simply waiting for a moment to capture Grace unawares, as she delves into her world of play and fantasy, which seems more real than anything solid, and where as observer he must seek to be invisible in order not to disturb the story that is unfolding. [...]

2021
217 x 215 mm
80 pages
Hardcover
70 colour photographs
Language: English
Essay by Emma Mattei
Book design by Carl Johan Hane
Printed by Göteborgstryckeriet
Published by Outcast, Paris

© Outcast
© Johan Sandberg