Jukkasjärvi

Sometimes I will tell you about a certain photograph that means a lot to me. I have so many stories to share after all the years of photography.
-Allow me to present the photograph “Jukkasjärvi” which hangs in New York together with 23 of my art photographs. The exhibition runs until May 2023 at The Maidstone in East Hampton.
-In 2013 I was contacted by a woman from Hong Kong for prewedding portraits at the Icehotel. A few days before the assignment, she told me that her American fiancé had embezzled her fortune and she had called off the engagement. “I wanted to realise my vision and flew up to Kiruna with a borrowed kimono. The local hairdresser’s cousin turned out to be the perfect model, and when I saw her flying in the pillared hall, I got my dream picture.

“Like a whirling-dancing dervish, she is firm, the sand is snow, and she is not a monk in a trance, but Lilian from the area marked by the Torne river. In the past, a drama has unfolded. My friend from Hong Kong has ordered engagement photos, but the American fiance cheats her, cheats her out of money, and she breaks off the en-gagement. The sadness is total, but I, with my photo bags as my only company, complete the journey to Jukkasjärvi and the ice hotel where Lilian dances in front of the camera and it’s like in Tran-strömer’s poem ‘Romanska bagar’ in the pillar hall of ice: “Don’t be ashamed that you’re human, where proud! Inside you, vault after vault opens endlessly. You’re never done, and that’s as it should be. I was blind with tears”. And then as now vaults opened within us and no one is abandoned anymore”. Text Jens Odlander