CHRISTER STROMHOLM

Christer Strömholm is recognized as one of the major figures of the 20th century European photography. Strömholm captured his surroundings in black and white images that bear witness to his integrity, his humor discreet and with a very personal aesthetic. With an unrivaled sensitivity to the human suffering, based on his personal experience, he gave to the photography a new direction. Sean O'Hagan, in The Guardian, described it as "the father of Swedish photography, both for his lasting influence and for his role as a teacher." Born in Stockholm, Strömholm discovered the photography through graphic art in the late 1940s. In the In the 1950s and 1960s, he lived most of the time in Paris, where he developed his particular style of street photography. This is where he created his work the most famous, Les amis de la Place Blanche, a tribute to a group of young people transsexuals with whom he became friends and shared his life for many months. These young people were outcasts who were struggling to survive and whose main source of income was prostitution. In these legendary photographs, taken at night in available light, Strömholm has merged street photography and portraiture, depicting them as friends close as they were, in intimate and honest portraits, far from the spectacular or speculation. The friends of Place Blanche raise deep questions about sexuality and gender and, in his own words, Strömholm, "it's about getting the freedom to choose your own life and your own identity". In the early 1960s, Strömholm also participated in numerous photographic expeditions around the world, particularly in Spain, Japan, India and the United States. Early in his career, he began teaching in Stockholm, eventually creating the legendary Fotoskolan, which welcomed some 1,200 students between 1962 and 1974. Strömholm's work has inspired many generations of photographers, although he was not widely known to the general public in 1986, on the occasion of a major exhibition at Moderna Stockholm Museum. Stömholm died in 2002.