ROVA, Jenny - ALSKLING. A Self Portrait through the eyes of my lovers

Personal statement by Swedish photographerJenny ROVA

"My intention was to make a self-portrait made by other people. Their way to experience me would stay in the foreground.
I was asking my ex boyfriends and lovers to give me all the pictures they took of me during our relationship. The pictures I got were from a twenty-five years period of time. The first photo was done when I was nineteen, the last one this year when I’m forty-five. The series contains fifty-five photographs and has nine different authors. I’m presenting the pictures in a chronological order." (Jenny ROVA)

Background information

The work 'Älskling a self-portrait through the eyes of my lovers' by Swedish photographer Jenny ROVA can be seen as biographical work, telling about a part of her life, but it’s also an indirect portrait of the photographer, the partner behind the camera. An aspect that is interesting to her is the special way of looking at each other when you are in love. These pictures can be seen as an attempt capture closeness and attraction between two people within a photograph." (slightly adapted text, © Jenny ROVA)

Content

"In this (out-of-print) photo volume, 'Älskling a self-portrait through the eyes of my lovers', Jenny ROVA presents a self-portrait, but from the perspective of others. She asked her ex-boyfriends and lovers to give her the pictures they made of her during their relationship, ending up with a series that spans 25 years of her life. Nostalgic and often intimate portraits emerge through the eyes of nine different people, ordered chronologically and with the first snapshot taken when she was just 20 years old.
Together the fifty-five portraits in the series can be seen as a biographical account, but also an indirect portrait of the unseen photographer, the partner behind the camera. The pictures capture the closeness between two people in a single image." (©b.frank, 2017)

About Swedish photographer Jenny ROVA

Photo volumes by Jenny ROVA