ENGSTRÖM, JH

About the Swedish photographer, JH ENGSTRÖM (b. 1969, in Karlstad)

After assisting Mario TESTINO in Paris and Anders PETERSEN in Stockholm, he received his formal education from the Photography and Film department at Gothenburg University, Sweden, graduating in 1997 before moving to New York between 1998 and 2000 where he spent time at Robert FRANK’s studio.
JH ENGSTRÖM’s practice is based on the bypass of all rules and advocates great freedom of style. Feeling at ease with the instantaneous as much as with the staged frame, a virtuoso of the black and white and of color, he masters the accident and toys with techniques to question photography itself.  In the years 2000-2010, his forms of representations evolved to combine various means including installation, video, books and writing as a way to abolish hierarchies between the images and introduce an ethereal lyricism into his work. An intuitive approach that conceals a very personal reading of the world in which the autobiographical exploration is central. JH ENGSTRÖM demonstrates that all things carry vital energy within, that solitude and empathy, feelings of safety or on the contrary, vulnerability, are experienced every day. Hence, each portrait or self-portrait, still life or landscape, holds a sum of recollections and constitutes an intimate, visual and poetic journal that addresses each and every one. In 2012, JH ENGSTRÖM and Margot WALLARD established Atelier Smedsby, a one-year workshop with three week-end sessions allowing participants to exchange with the two artists about their photographic work. . He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2005. JH ENGSTRÖM lives and works between Paris and Smedsby (Värmland, Sweden).

Photo books by JH ENGSTRÖM

'Shelter / Härbärge' (1997); 'Trying to Dance' (2003); 'Haunts' (2006); 'Karin Mamma Andersson' (2007); 'CDG / JHE' (2008); 'Sketch of Home' (2008); 'From Back Home' (2009, with Anders PETERSEN); 'La Residence' (2010); 'Foreign Affair' (2011, with Margot WALLARD); '7 days, ATHENS, November, 2011' (2012, with Margot WALLARD); 'Sketch of Paris' (2013); 'Langt Fran Stockholm' (2013); 'Ende und Anfang' (2014); 'Karaoke Sunne' (2014, with Margot WALLARD); 'Tout va bien' (2015); 'October 2016: Fear of Leaving' (2016); 'Revoir' (2016); 'Crash' (2017); 'Day by Day' (2020)