An interview with photographer Dawid (Björn Dawidsson) by Anette Sallmander, and published in LOFT The Nordic BOOKAZINE Volume #10

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All photos © Björn Dawidsson

Born in 1949. Known only as Dawid, he is one of the first photographers to stage exhibitions with only photographs at the popular art venue in Stockholm, Liljevalchs, in 1971. Since then he has continued to be the first in other ways the first photographer and artist at several Art Galleries and Museums.

While Dawid climbs up and down a ladder to create comfortable lighting for the interview, he keeps talking. He looks like an 80s musician, all dressed in black. Later I learn that he actually is involved in music as well. After some small talk, typical of two persons who have never met before, he says, It has been really hard for me.

Oh, I reply, We are silent until he starts to laugh, somewhat ironically. Nobody Loves Me was his first exhibition. It depicted a black, pessimistic view of society and unloved individuals.
His studio is in an industrial building outside the city of Stockholm. On the floor there is a racetrack. I ask if he is doing some kind of advertising job or a new art piece. The picture of a 20 m long winding course doesn't look like any of his other work.
No, this is pure pleasure, he admits. While covering the windows with white curtains to diffuse the light, he tells me about the day before when he climbed a ladder to place the first photo portrait at the Royal Academy of Music founded by the Swedish King Gustav III (1771). Until now, the Academy used to honor the work of former chairmen with oil paintings, of which there are hundreds, prominently males. Now, in 2009, they took a leap forward, bringing the art of photography into a house of distinguished heritage. Dawid is a true modernist and has always been going his own way.
 

Dawid: I didn't choose to become a photographer, I'm romantic enough to believe that I was chosen.

Anette Sallmander (AS): How were you chosen? It sounds almost like a religious experience.

Dawid: When I was 18 years old I got my first camera through some friends and it was magic. However, I believe that I was prepared, talented for taking photos, with some artistic gift. So from that moment in 1968, it took me only three months to become a student of the Swedish guru photographer Christer

Strömholm.I also completed in one year a three-year program at a photo school. My teacher made me skip the first year because it because it was too elementary and in my second year everything was going my way as I was working and exhibiting.

AS: It seems that you did not have the time to plan to become a photographer before becoming one?

Dawid: Exactly, because I'm also a little bit stupid. I do not have the capacity to plan things, I almost don't have any memory, my memory is not working, I'm quite blank in dealing with the past.

-You might think I'm joking, but it is true, I have no memory at all. It is hard, almost tragic, but it is what it is. I can only be in the here and now.

AS: It sounds wonderful. People take courses to be able to be present, and here you are with a capability of being here and now.

Dawid: Yes, but it is involuntary.

AS: How does your artistic process develop when it is impossibleto plan?

Dawid: I come to my studio everyday, and if I'm bored enough I will produce something. Boredom is my strongest motivation.

AS: So your day just passes by?

Dawid: No, sometime I do plan something, and I do go to my studio everyday where I have things to do, calls, e-mails and so on. By coming to the office, replying to requests, the plan takes shape. When I was young, I didn't really know why or what I was doing. After a photo shoot, for example, I developed the negative, I chose those I liked, and then I developed prints. When I saw them in front of me, I could see a pattern. Today, I recognize the pattern right away, the potential qualities, or whether I need to enlarge, minimize or multiply.

AS: In your former art works, you have worked with proportions.

Dawid: For me, aesthetic means having to explain, it is an instrument. I'm known as an aesthete. Some believe that I work only with form and appearance, but I don't feel I'm confined by it, although I'm interested in that angle. Why do people perceive it as negative? It would be like a musician who is interested only in the melody without caring how it would be presented, performed or interpreted.Or an author who didn't care about the order or the value of the words.                                                                                      

AS: Perhaps some people try to understand the message, but if they don't, they become afraid and then criticize it by saying that it's formover content?

Dawid: But the two things are deeply connected. One can't leave out one for the sake of the other. The art that has survived has always been resented with refinement.

AS: What creates meaning in the artwork you do?

Dawid: It is the continuity that creates importance. Of course, looking back, you could ask how important was it when I started to photograph rusty screws and nails? But when I recollect what was inspiring me, I realize that some of it has made a difference. Many years ago, while looking at a Robert Frank's book, a couple of pictures made me shudder. That altered me, and that experience has been with me since then. Although I'm not the type who becomes a fan of anybody, there are for me some inspiring artists, like Robert Frank or Frederick Sommer, they showed up when I needed them. I must say I consume almost no culture at all. Usually, I say that art is boring, but it's fun to do it by yourself.

- I only attend my friend's exhibitions hoping they will come to mine.

I might see more art if I was not so lazy and frozen or if I were allowed to drink and drive. It is so sad not to drink because you have to drive and it is so hard going back home without a car. Swedish weather is not for me. But I am not as dramatic as it sounds. I live a fairly quiet life, I'm just makingmyself to be a drama person.

AS: Is there anything wrong with being dramatic?

Dawid: What do you mean?

AS: Isn't life dramatic in large and small ways?

Dawid: Probably life is quite dramatic, and the Australian Aborigines really carry the understanding of that. They say, You live your life to be able to tell stories about it. In our culture, people became unhappy when things go wrong (of course it's not fun to be sick or lose someone), but if you miss a flight or get lost in a foreign country, new things happen and we become familiar with novel thoughts and feelings. When everything runs as usual there is nothing to tell. It is when the pattern is breaking that we have something to tell. Life would be poorer without all the stories about things that happened when it went wrong.

- Great inventions and art would probably not exist without mistakes.

AS: Does your art take shape through mistakes?

Dawid: Yes and no, but there is a parallel to how I am received by the public. A lot of things that I exhibit don't become a success when.I present them for the first time. I get a lot of criticism for what I do and so it has been for my entire career. It always takes time before my work is accepted. Rusty nails? Why? Then slowly the view of the beholder changes and the rusty nails become interesting. At the last exhibition at Liljevalchs Art Gallery, I had 170 photos and paintings. I always do everything myself I develop the photos, frame them, I even design and make the frames, and my photos are often big scale. Of course I wish for a little applause. But I see it as throwing a stone in the water the rings will spread even if I will not experience the effect. Since I have been doing this for such a long time and learned that I have had on some people the same effect that Robert Frank had on me it would be unfair of me to complain. It is also a matter of time that has caught up with me. When I was young doing music, I noticed throughout the years that my choice of music got more and more refined. From The Beatles and Rolling Stones to JJ Cale or something more odd. One might not be popular in a broad way, but among the musicians one is appreciated; among the connoisseurs one is popular. That's maybe my case among photographers, who know the work I do and like my art. I'm not like ABBA or Carl Larsson, symbols of Swedish culture.

AS: Tell me how you exploit your ideas.

Dawid: I don't. I do not have ideas in that way. In my case, the theory comes after the practice. For as long as I have been working in the art scene, I see that the usual method used by many is to start with the question: What do I want to say and how can I illustrate it? This way of interacting with your contemporary is the most appreciated. I work in the opposite way. I do my pictures and then I ask my self, What did I do?

AS: Your art seems to be quite in sync with the present times and it seems like time caught up with you, now the worst that can happen is that you will be perceived as classic.

Dawid: Yes, some photos have made their way from being useless to find room, a place in art. A meaningless image has found its place. Now you see it on a wall, in a museum, a gallery, or in somebody's home. That did not exist when I started, although, of course, there have always been people with higher values who understood quality. In that sense, I feel that everything I did was right.

AS: What is the most important project you have done?

Dawid: It is always the latest, since my memory is so bad. But there is a favorite, and that's the exhibition 'Rust' that took place at the Modern Museum in Stockholm. This exhibition created some tumult and influenced a lot of younger photographers. Another exhibition that had a strong impact is an exhibition called 'Really'. Now I'm doing a re-enactment for the Hasselblad Center at the Göteborg Museum of Art. Another place I'm proud of being shown at is the Thielska Gallery in Stockholm, which has the most unique collection of Nordic painters, such as Edvard Much, Carl Larsson, and Bruno Liljefors. I have been the first photographer to be invited to exhibit there by its Director Ulf Linde.

AS: So you are a popular artist after all.

Dawid: There are certain motifs in which everybody is interested, such as flowers, dog, cats, and children. If you pursue such motifs in an exhibition, you will find a big audience, irrespective of the quality. It is a kind of human vice. Rusty nails are evidently not interesting. My way has almost been a revisitation of photography's language.

-I have always looked for what's happening at the borders of form and content. I have a huge production to my name and a lot of it is not ever shown.

AS: Can you show me some of them?

Dawid: Oh, no. I would never show a picture that hasn't passed the needle's eye of an exhibition.I experience an artist with great integrity. And the meeting raises a lot of questions about the everyday life of being in the flow of creation. It is humbling Dawid's courage of waiting for the idea instead of running to catch it or construct it. What would happen if one would make this attitude a conduit for life? I don't know, but I feel tempted to try and see what might happen.

This article was published in LOFT The Nordic BOOKAZINE Volume #10. It was written by Anette Sallmander, writer, actress, dancer and producer from Stockholm.