Double December release

Two books, two ways of carrying memories: Your Road Is Steel brings together over 300 historical images from Fagersta’s photo collections, while Memory of Dawn lets photographic montages and Edith Södergran’s poetry meet a personal, autofictional memory. The evening moves between collective archive and private tale, between the image as testimony and the image as narrative.

Conversation with Kristina and Jan at 18:00.

Memory of Dawn consists of photographic montages that meet strongly condensed and reworked text fragments from Edith Södergran’s poetry. The photobook’s structure and composition are built on an ongoing dialogue between text, form, and photography, which together tell an existential tale, with an opening and closing by William Shakespeare.

Kristina Alexanderson/Therese Banström work together with photography, text, and form. Our point of departure is a conceptual expression in which photographs, form, and text interact and dissolve through and within montage. Together we explore how gender roles, norms, and shared notions affect our identity, our present, and our way of living. We want to challenge the boundaries of the photobook as a form of expression by examining and challenging materiality in text, form, and image. The goal is to create new possibilities to see/read/understand the stories we tell about ourselves—who we are, who we should be, and life.

www.blindgata.se

Your Road Is Steel – Fagersta and Photography 1880–1980 brings forward a photographic treasure from the mill community of Fagersta in northern Västmanland. The work has been going on for many years, and the certainty of the images’ significance has grown along the way. Photographs are a central part of cultural heritage. They bear witness to the recent past—memories of time and people, place and change.

Fagersta’s photo collections are like a bank vault filled with stories of past and present. The book contains more than 300 historical photographs. At the center are fifteen photographers—both amateurs among the Works’ workers and salaried staff and professional photographers, some of them visiting temporarily. Fagersta is the book’s geographical focal point, and the book places the local and personal as parts of larger historical processes. Fagersta has always been in the middle of the world, in the middle of time.

Jan af Geijerstam (b. 1951) is an author and historian focusing on industrial heritage environments, mining and metallurgy, and photography—nationally and internationally. Based in Stockholm. Extensive experience as a journalist, primarily as a freelancer. PhD in History of Technology/Industrial Heritage Research at KTH. He has written, edited, and contributed to a long series of books. Together with Professor Marie Nisser, he was editor-in-chief of the twenty-fourth volume of Sweden’s National Atlas, Mining, Mines and Metal Production.

Peter Nyblom (b. 1945) is a photographer, image collector, picture editor, and local historian, based in Fagersta. He has published several books on his own imprint and contributed to many others, including Slag Stone & Slag Houses – unique cultural treasures. In the late 1970s he began the long-term project “Fragments from Bergslagen”, a photographic documentation that is still ongoing. Peter has held a long series of exhibitions and in 2014 received the Johan Ahlbäck Prize. The same year he was named Fagersta Resident of the Year: “For his many years of work bringing Fagersta’s modern history to life.” Peter has a background in the steel industry, where he worked for 20 years.

www.balkongforlag.se