Tio fotografer - självsyn och bildsyn : Svensk fotografi under 1950-talet i ett internationellt perspektiv

Abstract: The dissertation Ten Photographers. Selfperception and Pictorial Perception. Swedish Photography in the I950s in an International Perspective concerns a dynamic decade for Swedish photography. It concentrates on photographers who participated in the Young Photographers (Unga fotografer) exhibition in 1949 and subsequently crystallised into Ten Photographers (Tio fotografer), a group formed in 1958 by Sten Didrik Bellander, Harry Dittmer, Sven Gillsäter, Hans Hammarskiöld, Rune Hassner, Tore Johnson, Hans Malmberg, Pål-Nils Nilsson, Georg Oddner and Lennart Olson.The work is based on interviews, with seven members of Ten Photographers and with the art critic Ulf Hård af Segerstad. The theory underlying the studies of Swedish photography is drawn from the critical approach which in recent years has pervaded research into the history of photography. The dissertation follows two main threads. One is the issue of how photography «becomes» art, which is primarily a discursive, socially constructed process. The other is the perception, common at the time, of photography as a language, a vehicle for human communication.Sweden's young photographers in the 1950s called for a change - in themselves as well as in their public - in the perception of pictures. The international culture offered them alternative ways of working with and viewing the photographic medium. It is evident that the paths for communication in Swedish cultural life complied with certain structures that governed the acceptance of photography as an artistic exercise and thereby qualified the photograph as an object for museum and institutional collections. Rune Hassner and his colleagues can be seen as powerful performers in a process of communication that generated authority, commanding the contemporary arena and also initiating an account of its history. In conclusion there is a discussion of the widespread postwar perception of photography as a language. The exhibition The Family of Man, which was based on such theories, is considered at length.