Lars Tunbjörk
Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk takes wry snapshots of suburban life, casting an objective eye over the anxieties and banalities of the post-industrial age. In his highly saturated and often sparsely populated pictures, he takes aim at office spaces, parks, and roadsides in locations all over the world, often from odd and distanced vantage points. An exemplary photograph is Food Industry, Tokyo, 1999, in which a woman hides behind the low wall of her cubicle, her face obscured and surrounded solely by a gray and empty office. Likewise, in Oland, 1991, a middle-aged couple lounges on the grass of a suburban Scandinavian development, under two tiny yellow umbrellas. “I always try to be very visible as a photographer,” he told the New Yorker. “I don’t know how much I influence a situation, just by having a camera.”
Tunbjörk was born in 1956 in Borås, Sweden. He got his start in his 20s as a photojournalist for Swedish newspapers during the 1970s. After achieving widespread recognition in his native country, Tunbjörk began to exhibit internationally to acclaim. His work is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been shown at institutions throughout the …
Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk takes wry snapshots of suburban life, casting an objective eye over the anxieties and banalities of the post-industrial age. In his highly saturated and often sparsely populated pictures, he takes aim at office spaces, parks, and roadsides in locations all over the world, often from odd and distanced vantage points. An exemplary photograph is Food Industry, Tokyo, 1999, in which a woman hides behind the low wall of her cubicle, her face obscured and surrounded solely by a gray and empty office. Likewise, in Oland, 1991, a middle-aged couple lounges on the grass of a suburban Scandinavian development, under two tiny yellow umbrellas. “I always try to be very visible as a photographer,” he told the New Yorker. “I don’t know how much I influence a situation, just by having a camera.”
Tunbjörk was born in 1956 in Borås, Sweden. He got his start in his 20s as a photojournalist for Swedish newspapers during the 1970s. After achieving widespread recognition in his native country, Tunbjörk began to exhibit internationally to acclaim. His work is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been shown at institutions throughout the world such as the Museum of Photography in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, and the International Center for Photography in New York.