This unique documentary project by the famous Danish photographer Henrik Saxgren about immigration to Northern Europe will open at Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Sweden, in January 2006. The opening of WAR & LOVE will coincide with the onset of the Multi-cultural Year 2006, which Sweden has declared. The exhibition will be on tour throughout Scandinavia for the next two years.

As the title indicates, war and love are two key reasons for people to look for a better life in Northern Europe. First and foremost is the fact that most immigrants are victims of war; internal conflicts and wars between countries. Love is the other strong reason for wanting to move to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and such remote places as Greenland and Iceland. In his research project on immigration, Henrik Saxgren has been investigating and photographing immigrants in all these countries. Using medium size cameras he spent four years on the road to complete this photographic documentary. This project was financed by theHasselblad Foundation, the Nordic Culture Fund and the Velux Foundation.

WAR & LOVE is probably the largest photographic project about the millions of people who have ruptured their ties with their native lands in search of a better life since Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s documentation MIGRATION, which was exhibited and published in the year 2000. Saxgren, however, starts where Salgado stopped. Where the long journey into the unknown has come to an end, Henrik Saxgren´s in his pictures portrays the true immigrant.

In his work Saxgren has identified around 110 different ethnic groups who have immigrated to the North of Europe. Out of these groups individuals, couples and families were randomly picked to be photographed and interviewed by Henrik Saxgren in their homes and workplaces. Obviously posing, Saxgren’s immigrants look into the camera in their new environments, environments that, in most cases, reveal their origin in an often touching way. Weare moved by the welcoming looks on their faces, a look as if to invite us, the onlookers, into their new homes. A gesture that, hopefully, will have a positive influence on the viewer. Maybe aid Scandinavians in dealing with their professed difficulties in making acquaintances with immigrants. Immigrants in big cities like Stockholm  comprise some 25% of the population today.

To illuminate the sometimes bleak daily life in the Scandinavian countries, Saxgren - it seems to me - intentionally holds back the colours in his well lit photographs of the new members of society. In contrast, he works in vivid colours when showing large panorama views of different refugee camps, where immigrants are placed and often spend years waiting, whilepolice, bureaucrats and social worker ponder the question whether or not they have a right to receive a residence permit.

Another obvious comparison with Henrik Saxgren’s project, besides Salgado’s subject matter being migration, is, of course, German photographer August Sander’s (1876-1964) monumental project portraying the German population between the First and the Second World Wars. In 1929, Sander published Faces of the Times (Anlitz der Zeit), a book of sixty portraits, which has since become a classic in the literature of European photography. In front of his camera, Sander gathered individuals from all walks of life - farmers, clergymen, painters, bureaucrats, gypsies, nuns and clerks as well as the unemployed and the mentally ill.

- From the very beginning I was most inspired by August Sander, Saxgren discloses. I admired his toned down subjectivity and almost scientific seriousness. I can still find new information in his photographs today. My concept from the very beginning was to have the same objectivity in the framing and lighting in my photographs that Sander and his German colleagues had in their spirit of „Neue Sachlichkeit„ („New Objectivity„) in the 1920’s, writes Henrik Saxgren in the afterword to his new book.

It is fair to say that Henrik Saxgren’s new project about immigration will have an enormous impact on the way we look at these new Scandinavians, These new Scandinavians who, no doubt, will have a long road to travel before being fully accepted and assimilated into the Scandinavian societies. Hopefully, reluctant Danes, Finns, Norweigians, and Swedes - by looking at the photographs of these new groups at their own pace at Hasselblad Center and reading about them in the new book WAR & LOVE - will open up and welcome these new Scandinavian into their hearts and minds. If Henrik Saxgren’s photographs and texts helps to bridge the gap between „them„ and „us„ his project will be remembered for generations to come.

Hasse Persson

Exhibition Curator