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Just like I wrote in the last post, I´ve been making things harder by trying to categorize the posts and photos with smart names, to better fit the theme. I´m not sure if I should keep doing the categorizing for a while and just upload the photos as I shoot them. Time will tell, but for now now let´s go into the strange land of Corona.

When I browse through all my images from the this project it hits me that the first batches of photos, from back in early April when the pandemic was “young” and we knew nothing, everything was totally uncertain and the society was more in state of shock and panic, I get a cold and unnerving feeling from these photos. There is some kind of fear in them, some cold and ominous feeling that this thing might actually kill us, or at least turn everything upside down. We were loosing our jobs and income, we didn´t know if we would get any money at all, were we going to get evicted from our homes? What the fuck was happening?

Everyday was like a fog, a thick and slowly moving fog that stopped the entire world. The virus was coming and we didn´t know what to do. Everyday at 2 pm. I sat in my sofa watching the daily press conference with the authorities and politicians, trying to get some kind of update and information about the current state of everything. One day the virus didn´t infect you from touching surfaces, the other day it did. One day we had enough protective equipment in the hospitals, the next day we absolutely did not. Time will tell if the Swedish strategy has been effective in the long run, but many times we have all just been so confused by contradicting reports and recommendations.

I´ve learned that some photos that doesn´t seem to be important or any special at all today might very well be super interesting and important in maybe a few months from now, because you know, maybe everything has changed

Like I wrote in the last post and in the intro to this post, the categorizing of the “chapters” or whatever I should call it, the different themes of the photo galleries and posts, it just makes everything much harder for me. I dont know why I have that need to do that, I think I want to sort the photos in themes because maybe they would be better together or something? Or that I think it´s more and creative to come up with smart and intriguing names for the themes, that somehow people would think it´s even cooler and better with those fucking categories and names. Like this post I´m writing now, Stranger Things, where the photos are supposed to be of “strange things” that are happening right now. Like the hairdresser looking like some spaceman cause he doesnt wanna get infected by you. Or the hand sanitizers that are literally everywhere now. These things would be totally weird some months back. Or the fact that the skies here in Stockholm are almost totally free from airplanes since several months. When I realized that, I was actually kind of blown away by that fact I hadn´t seen any planes or white trails in the skies for so long. So when I actually did see a plane I really reacted strongly, like ” WOW LOOK F*CKING PLANE IN THE SKY!!! ”

That little strange thing made everything seem like normal for a second.

Ok so to wrap things up with the whole problem around my categorizing and naming issues, instead of just posting photos in chronological order as I would go out and shoot, I thought that it would be cool and smart to sort the photos in different themes with cool names. Since I´m a huge fan of different pop-culture like film and rock music, I thought it would be cool to come up with cool smart-ass names inspired from that and apply to the photo themes. Shiiiiit ….
When I write this now it really sounds over-achieving and just totally complicating things. Sure it would be super cool if it worked everytime and if it didn´t take so damn long to come up with the names and not to mention the sorting and analysing of the photos. All in all, it just takes time from the fun, and the fun being getting out there and creating photos and sharing them with you. And now that I think about it, even if I did post the photos in chronological order as I shoot them, that would also be cool since I would show the whole story from start to finish.

Whatever the finish will be, it will come and I will photograph my way through this to tell the story.

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COMING UP NEXT!

From now on I will not be slowed down by this naming and categorizing issues, I will post the photos as I go out and create them to tell a current story of what´s happening right now here in Stockholm. But with that being said, I already have a name for the next post hahaha, that post will have more photos of when I practise street photography of people. I´m trying to get closer to people and get more intimate and interesting photos, but it´s so hard and scary to just snap that photo in the moment, getting more up-close and personal without asking first. Some photos I feel I just have to stop the person I ask for permission to take their photo, but sometimes you just have to “not care” and just get the goddamn picture. I´m trying to become much better at that. The first photos in the next series are shot from a longer distance, almost “stalker-style” since I wasn´t comfordable in getting closer. Then the photos get more and more close and it´s very fun the see that progress, as I wasn´t as afraid to get closer or ask for permission. So I named that chapter or series to “Afraid To Shoot Strangers“, taken from an Iron Maiden song. I thought that was kind of clever 🙂