Lotta Antonsson and Gillis Häägg

Lotta Antonsson’s picture series “Monika” hangs on the wall. “Monika” consists of seven photographs in harsh and faded light, portraits of seven individuals on the border between girls and young adults. They look straight ahead at us with straight, almost neutral gazes from their deliberately unedited images.

Lotta Antonsson is one of the most tone-setting artists of our time using photography as a tool. In the late 1980s, Lotta worked as an assistant in photographer Tom Benson’s studio in Gothenburg. She worked early on with performance, and filmed performance, such as “Slap Happy”, a collaboration with Annika von Hausswolff. In the series “Take it as a man” Lotta Antonsson used herself as a model; a model who poses what is usually called “challenging”. These photographs have been processed through photocopiers and rendered almost anonymous, in their lack of contrast. Antonsson also works with the rooms she exhibits in, with shells, driftwood and processed photos from older photo series and newspaper clippings. The photo series “Monika” was once exhibited with objects in the room, such as hair braids and record players, but the photographs themselves thus differ stylistically from much of her other output, with their claim to sincerity. But just like in Antonsson’s other works, questions are asked about the viewer’s gaze; what are you looking at, really?

Like Lotta Antonsson, Gillis Häägg processes his images to the desired result. His pioneering work with colleague Lennart Nilsson on the book “A Child is born” has been viewed by generations. Häägg’s colouring of Nilsson’s scientific photos gave an increased educational dimension to the viewer’s understanding of the material. In his own picture “The last straw” the colouring is quite far from scientific, and gives the cow, which looks straight ahead at us, and the surrounding nature, a distinctly unnatural shade of steel grey, yellow and red. The photograph is a debate post concerning our way of relating to nature, both via colouring and the apocalyptic title. When does the last cow take the last straw from the ground? A debate post as relevant today, as when the image was created in the 1970s.