I Am a Camera — Jan Troell and Photography
“First I see the camera, then I see Jan.” — Agneta Ulfsäter-Troell. When his best friend Ove buys a camera, Jan Troell does the same. At Järnvägsgatan 27 in Limhamn, the young Jan transforms a wardrobe into a darkroom, where images slowly emerge from chemicals, light, and anticipation. With his Zeiss Ikon, he begins exploring the world around him.
Court photographer Eric Jeppsson, who lives in the same neighborhood, gives him advice as well as developing chemicals in a Vichy bottle — the rest Jan must discover for himself. He photographs his family, the cats, the harbor light, winter branches, and faces that do not yet know they will one day be remembered. Even then, something is already present in his gaze — curious, intuitive, and intimate. The camera is forever by his side.
With a camera in hand, photography becomes a way of seeing and engaging with the world, marked by an unusual sharpness for detail and a special sensitivity to the greatness within the small. There is a trust in intuition — in the spontaneous, fragile, and intense qualities of a face, a movement, or light falling across a kitchen table.
This exhibition presents Jan Troell’s cameras and hundreds of photographs from both his private life and his cinematic work. Although the creative environment of Smygehamn, outside Trelleborg, has been the base for his artistic practice, the camera has traveled across much of the world.
Here are images spanning nine decades, where we encounter people such as Max von Sydow, Mia Farrow, Charlie Chaplin, John Huston, Liv Ullmann, Monica Zetterlund, Georg Oddner, Ingmar Bergman, and Allan Edwall, side by side with family, everyday moments, studies of nature, and landscapes close to home. The iconic and the private coexist simultaneously, without hierarchy.
“Photography has always been important,” Jan says. “Even when I was writing screenplays, if I got stuck, I could open a photo book at random. In the image that appeared, the solution was often there. Being forced to begin with that particular image allowed the thinking to move forward again.”
In a time when images are produced and disappear in an endless stream, Jan Troell’s photographs remind us of something increasingly rare: they are present. They unsettle slightly. They open something up. And suddenly we understand that an image can still alter the way we see a person, a society, an era — perhaps even ourselves.
“And besides, this is actually the very first photography exhibition I’ve ever taken part in.”
— Jan Troell