Swedish. Born in 1956 in Boras. Lives in Stockholm.
Whether creating an acid portrait of Swedish, representing the nightmarish world of offices or the desolate uniformity of the petrified neighbourhoods of the petit-bourgeois, looking at the position of those who have been marginalised in a country which has been vaunted for it system of social protection or exploring the strangeness of a town close to the arctic circle, Lars Tunbjörk has totally forgotten the black and white of his beginnings. All his energy is devoted to the exploration of colour, which he approaches with an in depth knowledge of the work of the great Americans of the seventies. This is his starting point for questioning the world, a series of interrogations more than observations, which he develops without pessimism, but with an undeniable affliction, which he softens with an often biting humour. Over time, his approach has become radicalised, purified, become less and less anecdotal, ending up with series in which he no longer represents characters but rather the tracks, often absurd, of their presence and their acts.
Sixty years ago, the village's child prodigy, Ingvar Kamprad, was seventeen years old and sold matches. Contrary to the modest trade as Andersen portrays, this will be the starting point of a fabulous empire. Kampgrad quickly founded his own company selling pens, furniture, socks... He names it Ikea, an acronym of his initials, that of his village and that of his farm. The legend is born.
Today, Ikea has 267 stores in 35 countries, with sales figures of 21 Billion euros. The kid selling matches is 83 now, he lives in Switzerland, and enjoys a modest fortune estimated at 33 Billion dollars. The small, cosmopolitan town of Älmhult maintains its quiet life, religiously paced by the...
On the run for 12 years, Rodovan Karadzic lived using the fake identity of Dragan Dabic, natural medicine specialist, when he was arrested in Belgrade on the July 22nd 2008.
The former chief of Bosnia's Serbian people is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
At the time of his arrest, Dragan Dabic was quickly becoming somewhat of a celebrity in Belgrade: he had his own column in a national magazine and he was collaborating with a well-known sexologist on a novel form of sperm-rejuvenation therapy.
Lars Tunbjork went to Belgrade and photographed those who met with him during these 12 years. From a nationalist bar keeper to followers of alternative medicine,...
Noomi Rapace, actress of the Millenium movie (2009)
Swedish actress Noomi Rapace is Lisbeth Salander, in a screen-adaptation of Steig Larsson’s trilogy, Millenium.
In “Men who don’t like women”, readers and spectators meet a young unconventional hacker who has to work with journalist Mikael Blomkvits, during an investigation.
International food prices raised by almost 40 percent in 2008, indicating that the monetary price is finally catching up with the true costs of cheap food : obesity in the U.S., malnutrition in developing countries and environmental degradation everywhere.
Portraits of young leaders who are changing the way we eat.
The photographs in the Vinter series deal with the mental state we enter during the dark period of the year. Between 2004 and 2007, Lars Tunbjork travelled around Sweden, trying to capture the mood that the winter months put us in here in northern Europe. The project became a way of doing something creative with the feelings of depression that beset him in the winter season. He shows us snowed-in playgrounds, streets and houses, but the selection of pictures also includes interiors, from cafes, restaurants and shops. We see people in their homes, at work or at parties.This series of photographs has another tone, another colour ranger, another temperament than his previous work, yet we...
Located in the far ends of Sweden, the city of Kiruna came out of the ground to serve the exploitation of the most important iron mine in the world. Authorities had wanted to make it as the spearhead of the Sweden conquest of its territory.
Lars Tunbjork draws here the portrait of the inhabitants of a city, which, in summer, never sees the sunset.
It’s moreover a portrait of the whole city that Lars Tunbjork makes: but not in a documentary way. Architecture, as well as inhabitants, becomes a character that occupies the frame and strikes a pose for the photographer.
In Sweden, some people are acknowledged as electrosensitive. They accuse electromagnetic waves to be the cause of the itches, migraines or dizziness they suffer, and use different methods to protect themselves.
The scientist are divided on the question.
Dubai is certainly one of the best spot in the world for sports : one can choose between a round of golf on a course watered by 2,256 sprinklers, a cricket match played on imported English soil, tennis, field hockey, Formula 1, camel races, or even skiing !
The Emirati billionaires pursue their quest to provide the biggest and best of everything.
Cannes film festival is often remembered with conventionnal pictures : a red carpet, some stars...
But Lars Tunbjork is offering here his quirky look on this big mass of the international cinema. Photographs full of micros and video cameras, of personnalities or random people. Stars always on the run, between two flashes. Lars Tunbjork shows us the excess of the most mediatic festival of the world.
Golf comes to the Middle Kingdom, with sometimes curious results.
For all intents and purposes, golf in China is just 20 years old. t hasn't evolved. It has arrived full-blown, in its high-end and even slightly decadent form.
The first modern course, an Arnold Palmer design, opened in 1984. Another dozen or so were added in the decade following. But in the last 10 years the total has soared to 230, making China second in Asia in terms of golf course acreage (behind Japan), and though there is supposed to be a moratorium on constructing courses, new ones seem to spring up every month.
More than just a serie of portrait of the American novelist Philip Roth, Lars Tunbjork is proposing here a true research work on the writer and his books. Philip Roth is photographed in situation, in spots that, without being in his novels, are as imaginary. it is Philip Roth in Philip Roth's America: a reinvented America.
Offices in New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, are the place of a life that people lose while earning it, they are unbearable.
Nightmares made of electric cables, depressing cafeterias, fake spaces, absurd tidy up, they become through the eye of Lars Tunbjork the most radical call for rebellion for a renewed « right to laziness ».
This work, which with « Home », constitutes discreetly and without obvious agressivity the most implacable critic of our system, a work extremely political under a perfectly acceptable cover, is only possible with a perfect control of color, which becomes the material of the picture.
I Love Boras is Lars Tunbjörk’s document of an aimless journey around Sweden between 1988 and 1995. Supermarkets, parties, small town streets, amusement parks, gas stations, TV-shows, landscapes, food. During that time Tunbjörk was working on his series "Landet utom sig" (Country Beside Itself), but these images were not used in that series because they didn’t fit, they were too ugly, too beautiful or too silly. Together they show a darker and more hysteric view of modern western society and Sweden during the economic recession of the early nineties.
Lars Tunbjork invites us to the land of great spaces, and of children dreams. The cowboy, mythic character of John Ford’ films, rises to a burlesque existence, by the way of the photographer work. We meet, of course, a John Wayne in cardboard, but also really Far West inhabitants.
I Love Borås is Lars Tunbjörk’s document of an aimless journey around Sweden, his home country. Supermarkets, parties, small town streets, amusement parks, gas stations, TV-shows, landscapes, food. A dark and hysteric view of modern western society and Sweden during the economic recession of the early nineties. Publisher: Steidl (2007) 200 pages Size: 35x28 cm ISBN :3865212964
Vinter
Co-published with Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Lars Tunbjörk has travelled around Sweden in an attempt to capture the atmosphere of the winter months for people living in Scandinavia. The project started as a means of surviving the dark part of the year. This series of photographs has a different mood, colour range and temperament compared to his previous work, but his style, his understated humour and often absurd subject matter are still unmistakable. Publisher: Steidl Publishing (2007) 192 pages Size: 23 x 28 cm ISBN :3865214975
Dom alla
Dom alla är en perspektivrik och reflekterande dokumentär skildring av socialt arbete. Författaren Göran Odbratt och fotografen Lars Tunbjörk har gjort upprepade besök i nagra svenska kommuner - främst Umea, Borlänge, Smedjebacken, Sundsvall och Botkyra. Text by: Göran Odbratt Publisher: Edition Journal (2005) ISBN :91-974182-7-7
Home
Lars Tunbjörk returned to his childhood neighborhood to photograph his mother's house. The experience intrigued him, and he continued shooting in similar areas around Sweden. Saturated with other people's personal memories, his photographs convey the peculiar atmosphere of silence familiar in middle-class housing districts, not only in Sweden but in other countries as well. Text by: Goran Odbratt Publisher: Editions Steidl (2003) 106 pages Size: 29x26,5 cm ISBN :3882438681
Office/Kontor
Lars Tunbjörk pictures people in the place where they spend much of their day: at work. In office buildings he photographs the personnel in the rigidly designed work environment. In these sterile work spaces, however, each person still expresses their individuality. They add something personal to the bleak furnishings, as a result of which each photo will tell its own, inscrutable story. In each photograph a balance between humour and sadness becomes apparent, a human factor that is at odds with the strict organisation of the work. Publisher: Editions Journal (2002) 116 pages ISBN :9197362972
Images au centre 01
8 châteaux, 11 expositions. Publisher: Editions du patrimoine (2001) 175 pages ISBN :2-85822-665-2
Landet utom sig bilder fran suerige
Text by: Thomas Tidholm, Göran Greider Publisher: Editions Journal (1993) 112 pages ISBN :91-630-1834-9
Paris 200 Ar Efterat
Herman Lindqvist och Lars Tunbjörk har naturligtvis spanat in dem. Pa varje gata, i varje byggnad, pa varje plats laddad med händelser, öden, har de tva gjort sina efterforskningar. Text by: Herman Lindqvist Publisher: Wiken (1989) 160 pages ISBN :91-7024-532-0
Photography Unbounded
Den unge svenske press-och reportagefotografen Lars Tunbjörk spänner över ett brett register i sin profession, men när han väljer själv är det inte mot samhällets utkanter han riktar sin kamera. Text by: Per Lindström Publisher: Trydells trychen (1987) 88 pages ISBN :91-87300-02-8
Photophnompenh Festival
Lars TUNBJORK comes from the world of press photography (he first worked in black and white for a Swedish daily newspaper). Over the years, he then became one of the greatest contemporary colorists – in a more and more radical process of elimination of anecdotes. He is also one of those who succeeded in avoiding ’trends’, to invent a writing that belongs only to him. First, with crushing humor, he painted, without any malice, the foibles of his contemporaries, by inventing absurd situations and functioning, especially around consumption. He had a crazy vision which,...