Sunsets in Sweden look very different throughout the year. In June it happens around 23 and in winter 15. Sometimes you wonder if the sun never sets and in winter you ask if it was even up. There is certainly something special about the sun and above all its rise and fall. As the day dawns, so does the hope for a new day, a good day. At the decline, we can start dreaming about the next day, about a good night’s sleep. We huddle closer together to keep warm even though we can still feel the heat of the sun in rocks around us. Since the beginning of photography, we have always tried to capture sunsets in pictures and in the age of social media, it is rare that a celestial phenomenon goes undocumented, whether it is amazing sunsets or the Northern Lights. What we often forget is to turn around and look at the last rays of the sun shining over our place on earth. This red warm blanket that lulls us to rest and gives us a steady dose of beautiful before we have to long for the first rays of the following morning. Pictures of people in the sunset are always difficult. If you want the sun as the main player, you get very dark people, and if you choose the opposite, the magic of the sunset disappears. Thanks to the electronic light, we can balance these two beautiful phenomena in one and the same image. Sunsets have always attracted myths and fairy tales and when you add the sea to this, the magic becomes doubled.

The faces! Our fingerprint to the world. It gives us access to places where it is known. It may deny us access to places where it is known. We scan faces every day, every face we meet, whether we want to or not. We decide if it is a threat or a friend, usually neither. We may not want to condemn others but our brain processes these visual impressions regardless. In everyday speech, we call that appearance. The appearance is our ticket to other people, some may be able to make an entrance without being seen and even then create a first impression, but usually the appearance is the first entrance to getting closer to another person. An image of a face is a final product that gives others an opportunity to process this appearance without even meeting the person who wears the face on a daily basis. There can be something scary about having your face stuck in a picture, especially if you don’t have control over the picture. -What if the picture is bad? -What if others think I’m ugly?

What if it were exactly the other way around?

The picture of Mika was taken with a 100-year-old camera on a glass negative. Why do we think that new technology gives better results? Bigger is better? Are we running ahead of ourselves in search of new ground, new discoveries? We look so much ahead that we forget to live here and now? We throw away the old and buy new, then we donate enough money to charity to ease our conscience.

There should be a day when the whole earth stopped. Where everything paused. So we had time to breathe, look around, reflect and above all care about each other. Not through any device or sound amplifier. Only to those we have in front of us, or choose to have in front of us. Doing things without anything calling for attention, without any obligations but just because we want to.