Interview with Christer Strömholm by Gunilla Knape. Autumn 2000. (Published in the “La Caixa Catalogue” 2001)

GK: You grew up in a military family, your father was an officer. In what way has that influenced your life?

CHR: From the very beginning, the military life was quite natural to me. It was necessary to be able to take care of yourself. Later on, through various circumstances, I also became a child of divorce with two fathers and two mothers. I was a lonely child and I learnt to take advantage of my two stepparents. At an early age I knew what I wanted and I was used to having my own way.

GK: You were an exchange student in the middle of the thirties, weren't you?

CHR: Yes, I was south of Berlin. I think I was 17 then. It was a summer. I was expected to know horseback riding, how to play tennis and bridge - which were things I had to learn, but in German. It was a way of being a part of the social life, which was important.

GK: When did your interest in art begin?

CHR: Very early. When I thought about what to do in life, there weren't, in fact, many professions to choose. One of the most natural things
for me was art and to make pictures.

GK: Why did you choose the School of Art in Dresden instead of the school in Stockholm?

CHR: At that time my family was extremely wealthy and it was natural to go abroad. I suppose it was what my parents wanted. They thought I'd learn German right away.

GK: Why did you leave Dresden to go to Paris?

CHR: I wasn't happy in Germany. My teacher, the professor at the university, and I had different opinions. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but it turned out to be a big deal and I was asked to leave the school. We had different opinions about Klee and Nolde - I liked their pictures but my teacher didn't. I went to Paris to paint. I came to the exhibition in 1937.

GK: Why did you decide to leave Paris after a short time?

CHR: I had chosen to study art and art meant museums then. It was a lot about visiting museums, and in this case Florence was the place where the knowledge was. It was like learning about the artists by observing what they did. You absorbed very much. From Florence I continued to Rome, Nice and Marseille. Then I returned to Sweden.

GK: Did you stay in Sweden from then on?

CHR: No, in 1938 I ended up in L'Estaque outside Marseille, where I stayed with a Danish family who had a castle. This became my headquarters in southern Europe. I was there two years before World War II and three years after. It was from the family I got my assignment in Spain - their sympathy was, as with most people you met, for the republicans. I was Swedish, had a driving license and knew how to drive a car.

GK: What did your assignment consist of?

CHR: I went to Spain to get a report that couldn't be sent by ordinary mail and a film that had to be developed. The package was to be sent with French mail to Denmark. I had to go through Andorra, drive the car and speak enough Spanish to manage. As a matter of fact it wasn't remarkable at all, but it
turned out to be remarkable because I discovered so many things I had not discovered before. The war that I had only read about - now I heard it, but I didn't see anything. But I saw the people coming back - and this was the war. War, so unromantic. Everything was crazy. It was at the battle of Gandesa, and there was a cavalry attack - it was tanks against horses, like in Poland later on.
This became a turning point for me. I already had an anti-Nazi attitude from the previous year and now I adopted the anti-Communist attitude when I saw the hostility between Anarchists and Communists. I knew a lot about the Spanish Civil War, but I didn't know a thing about the rest. And mostly due to this I took part in the so-called Finnish Winter War, 1939-40

GK: What did you do after your trip to Spain?

CHR: I returned to the castle and later I went to the Swedish artist Dick Beer's in Arles. Then I did my military service in Sweden in 1939 and not many months later the Winter War in Finland broke out.

GK: Why did you take part in the Winter War?

CHR: I believe it was a natural reaction. My father was an officer in the Finnish Lapland regiment, an honorary officer, so it was natural for me to enlist. I was at the front for three winter months and took part in a real pitched battle, at Salla.

GK: Has that had any influence on your life?

CHR: No, I don't think so. While there is a war going on you don't stop and think about it. Nothing happens. It's afterwards that things start to happen, if they do. When we had finished in Finland, we went home for two to three days before the Germans occupied Denmark and Norway and then we continued our activity, almost entirely the same group as before, as a volunteer corps. We kept on doing this until 1945-46. We knew what to do to be admitted into the Norwegian army. As we were soldiers, it was very easy to change over the borders.

GK: Was it as dramatic in Norway as in Finland?

CHR: No, it was a lot more dramatic as we were our own commanders. We had freedom of action. Our first madness was to try to take control of Trondheim. And it didn't work out at all. We were continuously fighting against the Germans. We had to stay calm, the Germans were totally different as soldiers. The Russians were the mass, the Germans were individualists and they knew a lot. They were simply smarter than we were. We were on the retreat all the time. The Germans were more experienced, and still the war hadn't started yet.
Then we crossed the border to go home and we got different assignments from the Norwegians. We crossed the border with mail on many occasions.

GK: You remained in Norway until 1945, didn't you? Was the war over for you by then?

CHR: No, I served the English in Stockholm, for the Norwegian side, by observing and things like that. Nothing special and yet so much.

GK: Have you mentally digested everything that happened during the war?

CHR: I haven't thought about it actually. But there are a lot of things that should be verified, what was true and realistic and what wasn't. It feels like I hardly know if it really happened, but is it a good idea to find things out now?

GK: What did you do after the war?

CHR: Well, then I continued at the School of Art, first in Stockholm and then in Paris. A couple of years later, in the fifties, I enrolled at the Académie des Beaux Arts. I didn't know I could do that, but since I had been in the army long enough I was allowed to enrol at the university. Every one taking part in the war was offered two or three years of studies when they left the army. I stayed at a hotel and lived an ordinary Paris life - I sat at bars and ate at restaurants. I went home to Sweden from time to time and I travelled to Spain, North Africa and Italy quite often during the summers.

GK: When do you start considering yourself a photographer?

CHR: Well, it's hard to tell when you start, is it when you buy a camera and call yourself a photographer? I have never managed to decide when I started.

GK: You both painted and photographed while studying art in Paris, didn't you?

CHR: Yes, and it is not until much later I was able to form an opinion of what I achieved.

GK: Do you have any paintings done by yourself that you're satisfied with and, if so, how old are they?

CHR: Yes, there are some from the thirties and some from the fifties - the ones that are in the kitchen are painted in Paris. These paintings are still interesting. Because they were made in the 50´s they are modern today.

GK: Why did you choose photography?

CHR: Simply because I could earn my living this way. With my camera hanging around my neck people knew I was a photographer. I discovered that being together with journalists gave me opportunities, as journalists need photos. I took photos, and got paid immediately.

GK: That was the only type of job you have done as a photographer, to take pictures for newspapers and magazines? You haven't done any real commercial jobs, have you?

CHR: No that’s right, I haven't.

GK: You also made several artist portraits during this period. Did you know the artists previously or did you get to know them?

CHR: Both, actually. I often had personal knowledge of the artist and his art. Thanks to that I normally knew more than the journalist did. I met them at the art bars or cafés that everybody frequented. After some time you recognise each other and say hello, which is a special kind of friendship. It means that you nod to each other in the street, but that's it. Yet there's a difference because you don't nod to everybody. It was then that I discovered I had a talent for getting inside the shell of the artists, since I knew their work. It was then, in 1949, the pictures began to crystallise.

GK: Have any of those artists influenced you?

CHR: Yes, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, in a more general way. And then of course - I didn't know him then - Le Corbusier and his way of thinking.
GK: Regarding the artists you mentioned earlier when we looked at the pictures, that Antonio Saura has influenced you to a considerable extent.
Is there anything in particular you have in mind?

CHR: No, not particularly, but his way of life and his way of behaving influenced me a lot and also his way of perceiving photography.
Antonio was an upper class boy from the city Cuenca and his brother worked with film and is one of Spain's faces towards the outside world. Antonio had a socialistic mind, which was quite important to him - and it was unusual as well.

GK: When did you get in touch with the Fotoform movement in Germany?

CHR: It was in 1949 in Paris and then in Germany. I had an exhibition in Paris and by coincidence Dr. Otto Steinert saw it. And there is more to it, as I spoke German and Steinert, by then, spoke a little French, we made a connection. I was accepted and later on I became a member of the Fotoform group, which by then consisted of seven or eight Germans and a few other foreigners. Fotoform was a transition period for me, it continued for four to five years, because I had my special point of view on the picture as such and the “Fotoform pictures “ were photos I already dealt with myself when I got to know the group. Photography was the essential part for them, while I had a different background.

GK: Has this affected you as a photographer?

CHR: Yes, it turned out to be very important because my way of taking pictures became accepted. I got publicity in the artistic world and that meant a lot. Exhibiting together with Dr. Otto Steinert meant that my pictures were shown in the papers - not as photographs, but as art.
And it was Louis Stettner, an American photographer, who said at a flea market that he had bought some kind of paper which he printed his pictures on. I bought the paper and the pictures turned out almost entirely black and white and I liked that. I picked it up as a manner I called Christer Christian's black and white pictures. The others copied this method from me.

GK: Why did you use the signature Christer Christian at that time?

CHR: I used it because it was impossible to learn the name Strömholm. I used it until I came home - all Fotoform pictures are signed Christer Christian.

GK: Several of your pictures of children have been taken in the Jura Mountains - how come ?

CHR: It was autumn. I was an ambulance driver for the Swedish Spanish aid during that period, 1949. I was asked to take a look at the tuberculosis clinics, cottage hospitals for Spanish refugees in Perpignan and in the east of France, and to pick up children in Perpignan, ten at a time. They were Spanish refugee children who needed adoptive parents. I drove them in the ambulance towards the Jura Mountains. Nobody had told me to let them have a pee. Before the second trip I asked if there was a special place where I could stop. There was a huge barn up in the hills of the Jura where friendly people would let the children stay over night and eat and I could let "my" kids have a pee. The pictures of the children were taken there.

GK: You have also taken some pictures in Tangier. What did you do there?

CHR: I was in Tangier in 1952 - the little boy in the alley is from that occasion. I went to Tangier out of curiosity, and also because I had a friend who was a cook on a boat. Tangier was a refuge, where I did some business – among other things I smuggled binoculars to the Canary Islands. I continued my wild life, and I got a job as a cook on one of the boats because I knew how to shoot with a machine gun.

GK: In the late fifties you came back to Spain. Was there anything special that made you return?

CHR: Well, partly I think it was a coincidence but it also turned out to be a personal interest for me - it was important because Spanish life interested me. I came back as a tour guide. I guided bus trips from Sweden to the north of Spain - Barcelona, and also Madrid, and Valencia.
I had a good deal of general knowledge as well as art knowledge, so I could guide the tourists without problems.

GK: How did you get all that knowledge?

CHR: I suppose I read a lot. I was already interested in art at an early age and I studied art history on my own. I found Goya very interesting, and he still is today. I was also interested in the history of religion and that focused my interest on Spain.

GK: How many years did you work as a tour guide?

CHR: From the late fifties and five years on, and still I could work in Stockholm during the winter months. I stayed at Palma for the last two years. It was nineteen bus trips altogether.

GK: Have you been to Spain on other occasions?
is not far away and very often I went to Cadaquès in the summer, a very nice little village just after crossing the Spanish border – we went there for the day to bathe. Lasse Söderberg and I lived from time to time in Madrid and we made excursions, but not in the borderlands - nor in Andalusia or in Cordoba. We made a trip following Don Quixote's footsteps and Lasse took me to two or three castles where kings had lived in the sixteenth century. Among other places we ended up in El Escorial, just outside Madrid. I remember it clearly because of a skinny little old man who was our guide and who knew an awful lot. You could sit and listen to him for ages.

GK: Have you worked much with Lasse Söderberg?

CHR: We've done quite a few things together for magazines. He wrote and I took the pictures. He is a writer and from time to time a cultural historian at the Swedish Embassy.

GK: How important do you consider your Spanish pictures to be in your overall production?

CHR: I believe they're important because I felt I controlled the photography - I could handle the individual picture. This is the beginning of the non-thematic
photographs.

GK: Your Spanish pictures are important as non-thematic pictures but you have also concentrated on some special themes during longer periods.
Perhaps the most important project is your vast documentation of the transsexuals living at Place Blanche in Paris which you started in the late fifties and that would last for almost ten years. Can you tell me a little more about this project?

CHR: I first came to Place Blanche in 1947. Place Blanche became very important - 'the transsexuals' is an important part of my photographic activities and my relation to the pictures I take. Then there is a standpoint to that way of living, as a prostitute. It was difficult to understand their lives and how they managed and why. And those standpoints touch upon your life. Therefore it was very important to take these pictures of them. It was hard work, and it was interesting.

GK: Why did you take such a great interest in the transsexuals?

CHR: It was because I didn't understand it myself. I hadn't given it a thought until I met them. We met by chance and I realised very soon, that as soon as you ask yourself why their lives are the way they are, it becomes difficult not to take pictures.

GK: Your motifs cover a very wide spectrum. How is that?

CHR: After fifty years of photographing I still don't know exactly what I do when I pick up my camera. I know when I sit down and think about it, but it isn't one picture in particular I'm looking for, but many. I often get pictures that are not necessarily visible on the surface.

GK: You often talk about the picture being beyond the surface of the picture.

CHR: The picture isn't obvious. This way of seeing and taking photos appears gradually. The other day I discovered something that was nothing and that's an important stage. When you pick up the camera, you observe a situation or a landscape, and you press the button. There are many things you are observing at that moment, and above all there are many pictures that the camera registers but your brain doesn't. When I've taken the picture I have to do something with it. That's why printing is so important. I need someone in the darkroom who knows me, who lives with me... and I've discovered that printers don't need more than four weeks to learn; either they don't understand anything ever or they get it at once. I've had very talented assistants and printers to help me.

GK: You've said that being a photographer is "a very lonely life". Nowadays you have young assistants and at the beginning of the sixties you founded the Photo School in Stockholm together with Tor-Ivan Odulf and trained many of today's best-known Nordic photographers and cameramen. How have you benefited from those young people?

CHR: The students perceived my pictures in their way and that strengthened me. It worked, I think they thought I was good, they saw things I hadn't seen, so it was essential. Thirty years later I still have people coming here showing me their pictures, themselves and their children. You have to remember that we had twelve hundred students that could call us twenty-four hours a day - we were awake anyway. Much of the school's contact with its students was based on us, and Tor-Ivan and I took care of them personally. And that's important.

GK: How do you relate to your motifs?

CHR: Sometimes I just pick up the camera to see what comes out. In those cases I pick it up very quietly; so that no one notices it. I don't make the great announcement saying, 'I'm a photographer so look this way'. It is simply a recording of an episode.

GK: How does your interest in people match with this way of thinking?

CHR: You have to be interested in people to make these pictures. I want a good relationship with the person and therefore I have to show respect. Respect is important. You can see that attitudes change. A 'no' on a Saturday evening is not necessarily a 'no' on Sunday. It’s all about eye contact. You have to see if the person in question is embarrassed or not. One has to bear this in mind. At Place Blanche I tried to enter their world and I believe I succeeded.

GK: What do you want to convey with your pictures?

CHR: I make images and they are not necessarily photographic pictures. What's important to me is what the picture says. The impression of the picture is what matters. That is even more important than the truth - a photographic truth. It is very difficult to explain what I want with a picture and I'm trying to do this now, in two books, one about Paris and one retrospective, 'The Testament'.

GK: You mentioned before that you still work with photography. Which of your latest pictures do you consider most important?

CHR: Pictures taken in Fox-Amphoux, and the Golgotha set.

CHR: The first picture was taken in 1949 and the next in 1970, but most of the pictures were taken in the eighties and nineties. I found a meeting point between a story and the pictures - to let objects and stones become faces. What you see is a stone, what you see if you take a closer look suddenly becomes a face. The set is made up of twelve apostles and six other Christian prominent figures (like Moses, John the Baptist etc).

GK: Is there any difference between when you started in the forties and today?

CHR: Yes, there is a huge difference because then you were obsessed by the camera and the camera's truth was the picture and it doesn't work that way today. Now I use the picture as something that becomes the truth
Look at old pictures. I've taken pictures, in the forties that are good but that I don't defend today. If I'd done them today they would have looked different, they would have been shot a couple of seconds later. The situation changes. And there is the question about what you should do. Perhaps you have to change for the situation. Perhaps you have to talk to the person in question to explain something. It's another way of making photography work. You're not a photographer, but a director.
You can feel it during the seconds that follow - that it doesn't work. That is what photographic technique is all about - that you only have one opportunity. It's an interesting thing because the human body works differently. Looking at your negatives you can see that you've taken pictures you didn't intend to take, for example the finger pressing the button to release the shutter must have been acting faster than the thought, and I'm totally unaware of it. The picture you didn't intend to take is the one you later are ecstatic about having taken.
The two boys in Paris with the handbags is an example of what I mean.

GK: Could you develop this further, since you have so many different types of pictures.

CHR: Yes, to answer the question, I have too many different types of pictures. I seldom leave home without my camera. This means I'm prepared to simply be there and to be available and receive the reality I meet. And the reality is I, what happens to me, and if you're open there are so many things happening. Since I have so many interests in various areas for the pictures, my pictures can fall into thirty or forty different categories depending on the nature of the picture. When you look at the negatives, your reaction is 'wow, he took that picture right after this one'. The typical example is the dead dog in Tarragona that's filed among nightclub and striptease negatives, taken in Barcelona. The thing is that I was in Barcelona one night and had been in Tarragona, a couple of hours south, earlier the same evening.

GK: What do you mean when you say you have so many interests in different pictures?

CHR: It means I keep searching for pictures and they come to me very slowly, in a way so that I clearly understand that this is a picture I can use.
It might be a picture of a child or a picture that says something I need to describe, something I have at the back of my mind. It becomes a picture for me. Someone else might not notice it at all.

GK: Which photographers have inspired you?

CHR: Very few photographers have interested me. Cartier-Bresson impresses me, but it's the photography, rather than the pictures, that interests me - the chance to take the pictures and create your own picture, as Cartier-Bresson did.

GK: You knew Brassai too, didn't you?

CHR: Yes, very well. We had a good relation and I feel his way of working was interesting. He planned the pictures and even changed the light bulbs sometimes. He managed to light up the butcher's, for example. It's a very slow way of working.

GK: Has he been your inspiration for your surrealistic pictures?

CHR: No, I wouldn't say that. But I got in touch with surrealism at an early stage, as I knew several surrealists and also Cartier-Bresson very
well. I attended some meetings, but no essential surrealist meetings.

GK: How do you perceive the photography that surrounds you today?

CHR: Most photographers are too interested in the money. It’s interesting that so few have discovered the opportunities of the camera.
Photographers belong to the family of artists, but most of them only make photographic pictures – they don’t see the art part of it.

GK: Are you more interested in modern art than today’s photography?
isn’t. And artists who use a camera for the first time take much more interesting pictures than photographers do because the artists think in another way.

Gunilla Knape