Behind the Camera (Med Kameran som Tröst)

GOTHENBURG FILM FESTIVAL 2004
Best Feature Film

Cameras became my upbringing, my education, my destination. One could regard this as a way of escaping. The darkroom became for me in my youth the place where I could daydream.

As a child I belonged to what you call the upper classes. But this class had no resemblance to the upper classes that I now see depicted in films and television series. I remember the upper classes of my childhood as eccentric. My relatives could have a chauffeur, a gardener, a cook, kitchen maids, parlour maids, and other servants. But they could also go bankrupt, wear threadbare clothes and behave unconventionally, to say the least.

I’ll return to the summer of 1951. My brother was 6, my sister was 10 and I was 12 years old. We lived in a huge flat in a posh area of Stockholm. But in our home nobody had made up the beds for many years. There was dust and dirt everywhere and the dark curtains were always drawn.

There was no food. All people living in the flat were paralysed by migraine attacks. Mother told us children every day that she was very ill. She would soon die. We children wished intensely that it would be true. This gave us a bad conscience, which we continued to have for the additional 50 years that she lived.

How far back do our do our memories go? Are they with us even though we have repressed them? When I was still fairly young I published a photo book with the title “Hiding Behind the Camera part 1”. I did this in order to fix everything with the help of the camera. But it does not work that war..

“Hiding Behind the Camera part 2” is a film.