Imagebeeld Edition, 2023. Edition of 250 copies.
Softcover, 48 pp., 40 b/w illustrations, 240 x 320 mm. Photographs by Gerry Johansson. Text by Gerry Johansson (English). Design by Giulia Bacchetta Francalaci.
Interview with Gerry Johansson
In March 1983, Gerry Johansson started a coast to coast photographic odyssey with the aim of meeting photographers, editors, and printers, all the while producing his own images along the way. This journey is an important stage in the development of Gerry Johansson’s work. For him, it would be the first opportunity to fully immerse himself in a photographic project, and to explore the traces of his predecessors so as to take his own work a few steps further. On this occasion, he traded his 35mm camera from the 1960s for a large-format camera that allowed him to move from “Street Photography” inspired by photographers like Walker Evans, Paul Strand, or Helen Levitt, to “Social Landscapes” in and between small cities or by capturing the vastness of the American countryside as he travelled. Every evening, from motel to motel, he developed his 8x10’’ negatives and even printed his contact sheets as a visual record of his road trip.
The eponymously titled book recounts this voyage. It includes a selection of images taken by Gerry Johansson in New York at the age of seventeen, as well as portraits of the photographers – Henry Wessel Jr., Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston, Richard Benson – he encountered a few years prior to and during his famous journey of 1983, along with sixteen Motel Prints chosen from the contact sheets printed at that time.
Gerry Johansson (born in 1945, Örebro, Sweden) is known for his countless images, shot in and between small cities using a Rolleiflex, typically in black and white and in small format, as precise as they are discreet, frequently with a real graphic dimension, and occasionally imbued with a very subtle sense of humour.
Since 1985, Gerry Johansson has produced a large number of books including the recently published ‘American Winter’ (2018) and ‘Spanish Summer’ (2022), both MACK. In Sweden, he has been awarded the Region Skånes kulturpris (2012) and the Lars Tunbjörk Prize (2019).
