Jh Engström: Tout Va Bien

Swedish artist JH Engström (born 1969) is an inveterate bookmaker. Most recently, his published works have explored ideas of place and home, including "Sketch of Paris" (Aperture, 2013), "La Résidence" (2010), "From Back Home" (2009) and "CDG/JHE" (2008). After more than a decade of such thematic projects, "Tout Va Bien" returns to the looser, more associative approach of Engström's critically acclaimed volume "Trying to Dance" (2003). The source for these photographs is nevertheless strongly autobiographical, as well as vividly metaphorical; a reemphasis of the artist's belief in photography's potential as visual poetry. The sequencing is highly charged with contrasts: black-and-white images mix with color; the gentle beauty of coastal rocks clashes with a flash-lit image of the bright, blood-red placentas from the birth of his twins. The book leaves it to the viewer to map his or her own network of meaning from image to image, page to page.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 152
Publication date: 2015-10-27
Measurements: 9.1 x 11.2 x 0.7 inches
ISBN: 9781597113489

JH Engström (b. 1969, Karlstad, Sweden) was an assistant to photographer Mario Testino 1991 in Paris, and in 1993 assisted photographer Anders Petersen in Stockholm. In 1997, he graduated from the Photography and Film Department at Gothenburg University and published his first book, Shelter (Bokförlaget DN, 1997). Among his other books are Haunts (Steidl, 2006), CDG/JHE (Steidl, 2008), From Back Home (together with Anders Petersen, Max Stršm, 2009), and Trying to Dance (Journal, 2004), which was short-listed for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2005. He exhibits internationally, and his work is held in collections both in Europe and the U.S.