The unknown Swedish photographer who photographed the streets of Franco's Spain

The Swede Christer Strömholm (Stockholm, 1918-2002) is a photographer practically unknown in Spain, despite the fact that he visited it three times and his fantastic black and white work, which includes images of civil guards, prostitutes, children and sailors. Americans on the Spanish streets of the Franco era.

However, the first time he arrived in Spain he did not take photos.

It was in 1938 and the young Strömholm served as a courier for the Republicans during the Civil War, crossing the border from France, explains Estelle af Malmborg, curator of the retrospective dedicated to this author by the Mapfre Foundation, in Madrid, until May 5. .

There are more than 150 images, all with analogue technique, which Malmborg describes as “the father of Swedish photography today.”

Spain, in one way or another, was present in his life from early on.

In 1937 she visited Paris for the first time for the World's Fair, where she saw Picasso's

Guernica

.

A stay that reaffirmed his vocation for art.

For this reason, as the curator explains in the tour of the exhibition with this journalist, Strömholm “started as a painter when he returned to Paris, in 1947, to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, but what finally attracted him was photography.” .

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In the French capital he met Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, and like him, he photographed fragments of walls and advertising billboards.

So far the brightest side of him, that of someone with the soul of an artist and born into a family of bankers (“I was a boy with a combed hairdo in a sailor suit,” he said of his childhood).

However, darkness followed him throughout his life, due to the memory of his father's suicide when he was only 16 years old (his parents were already divorced), the bad relationship with his stepfather and his participation in three conflicts: in the Spanish and , then, in the world championship, first with the Finns to stop the Russians and then in Norway in the resistance against the Nazis.

Perhaps for all these reasons, those who knew him describe him as a man of military bearing and explosive character.

He himself commented on his war experiences: “After such a hellish period you tend to isolate yourself a lot.

You become someone who tells entertaining anecdotes, but you never really reveal anything.”

The Mapfre Foundation in Madrid dedicates a retrospective to the work of the Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm (1918-2002).

There are about 150 images of his career.

In the image, 'Tangier' (1952).CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Self-portrait'.

The Swedish photographer took his portrait in Camargue (France), in 1951.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Gina and Nana', from 1963, is an image from Strömholm's best-known work, 'Place Blanche', in which he portrayed transvestites and transsexuals in that square in Paris.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Daniel Spoerri and Kichka', Paris (1962), a beautiful image from the exhibition, made up of about 150 black and white images.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Little Christer', Pigalle, Paris (1955).CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

Strömholm's exhibition dedicates a room to his portraits of figures from culture and art, such as Marcel Duchamp, whom he photographed in Cadaqués in 1963.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Jacky and Adèle Chanel', Paris (1960).

This is the image used by the exhibition organizers as the cover of the catalogue.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Chinatown' in Barcelona (1959). CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

Extraordinary portrait of the artist Alberto Giacometti, made in Paris (1960).CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

'Leo Zimmerman', Paris, 1949. Strömholm was, in addition to being a photographer, director for 10 years of the Stockholm photography school, Fotoskolan.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

With Europe finally at peace, for a few years he joined the collective of German photographers Fotoform, heirs of the Bauhaus, with whom he participated in group exhibitions in Europe and the United States.

It was a group that sought experimentation with images.

The following years, Strömholm traveled to numerous cities, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Calcutta, Nairobi, Los Angeles, New York, until he returned to Spain as a tour guide for his compatriots who arrived by bus (“He loved the nightlife of Madrid”).

His third time on Spanish soil was in 1962, accompanying his friend the poet Lasse Söderberg.

From that stay the book

Viaje en blanco y negro

was born , which would not be published until 2013.

At the beginning of the exhibition you can see his Spanish photos, powerful portraits of children he found on the streets, a subject that interested him greatly.

She photographed them all over the planet because, in some way, she identified with them.

“He treats them like adults in his photos,” Malmborg points out.

Also, images of Chinatown in Barcelona, ​​streets of Valencia and Palma.

Civil guards, prostitutes, priests also passed through his objective...

'Little Christer', Pigalle, Paris, 1955.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

With a style in which "he accentuated many blacks and whites, with strong contrasts," the curator points out, he did not make his copies, he had no patience, that was what he jokingly called "my slaves" for, students who They worked for him.

Strömholm defined his work as “subjective documentary photography,” although in his images he “revisits his own past, in some way they are self-portraits,” explains Malmborg.

He directed a photography school in his hometown between 1962 and 1972, where he transmitted his idea that more emphasis should be placed on the analysis of images than on technique.

His best-known series is

Place Blanche

- the Parisian square presided over by the famous Moulin Rouge -, about transvestites and transsexuals who worked in cabarets and prostituted themselves.

He stayed in a hotel where several of them lived, with whom he became friends.

Strömholm wrote about it: “I never took stolen photos.

He worked without

flash

;

“He only used the available light, often that of neon.”

He portrayed them with affection, elegant, fleeing from the sordid life that they had to live, like fellatio to police officers so that they would leave them alone, as the Swede said.

An experience from which he published the book

The Friends of Place Blanche

(1983): “The only thing they demanded was the right to be themselves, to not be forced to repress their feelings.”

Another room is dedicated to his original portraits of cultural figures, a commission from two Brazilian newspapers that began in 1949: Marcel Duchamp with a cigar in his hand, Giacometti behind the dirty window of his studio, André Breton, Le Corbusier... Also those he met in Spain, like Antonio Saura, serious and with his hands in his pants pockets;

Chillida or Tàpies.

The organizers of the exhibition emphasize that his knowledge of art made it easier for his sitters to let their guard down when they posed for him.

Self-portrait of Christer Strömholm, taken in the Camargue region (France), in 1951.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

His most important book is

Poste Remaining

(Mailing List), from 1967, a miscellany of his travels since the late 1940s, with numerous pictures that cause discomfort, sometimes even overwhelming, like those he made in cemeteries.

“They are photos that refer to the pain of his participation in wars and the death of his father,” Malmborg points out.

Recognition in Sweden was finally achieved with the exhibition

9 seconds of my life

, at the Moderna Museet of contemporary art in Stockholm, in 1986. A late assessment, at the age of 68, because the type of photography he had taken was not very appreciated. for a long time.

Applause outside his country came a decade later, in 1997, with the Hasselblad Prize, the most prestigious in international photography.

It was the happy ending for someone who said of his work: “I don't take photographs, I make images.

It's what I've done all my life".

'La Méthode', Paris, 1960.CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM

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