You Have Just Bought a Piece of Photographic History

Albert Sten

Contact:
albertoscarsten@gmail.com
+46 76-853 55 83

You Have Just Bought a Piece of Photographic History
2022

Exhibited at:
Härnösands Konsthall, 2022

Diving into the dark history of the shootings in Ådalen, Sweden 1931, I was interested in researching the photographic history connected to the event. To my surprise there were several archival news images for sale on Ebay in Lithuania from the event. I decided to buy the photographs and use them in the project and exhibition for “Jag ärvde en mörk skog dit jag sällan går”.

The images was displayed as a work at Härnösands Konsthall in 2022 with a passepartou on a light box. In this way they were both highlighted as photographs and historical objects with the back side notes by journalists seen as much as the images themselves.

Another part of the work was the process of buying back the images and relocating them to the region where they were taken. Most people in Sweden have at some stage seen the famous image of the demonstration in Ådalen before the shooting, these images together give further context and insights to the conflict before, during and after.