"Jura, Frankrike, 1949"
Signed CHR Strömholm and with fingerprint verso. Also signed by Örjan Kristensson verso. Gelatin silver print, image 15.2 x 12 cm. Sheet, 17.4 x 14.1 cm.
Lichtbildgalerie, Worpswede.
Bukowski Auktioner, Contemporary Art & Design, March 2016.
Tom Böttiger Collection, Stockholm.
Joakim Strömholm (ed.), "Post Scriptum Christer Strömholm", 2012, illustrated on full-page p. 281.
The photograph was included as an appendix in the book Hasselblad Center, "Imprints by Christer Strömholm", 1998.
Christer Strömholm's images of post-war Europe depict the poverty and human wreckage left behind by the war. In 1949, he finds himself in the Jura Mountains on the border between Switzerland and France. There, he takes some amazing pictures of children in the countryside, including the boy proudly showing off his snail farm and the two farm girls posing in the barn with the sun's rays as a halo around their braids. Among the many other tender portraits of young children he has encountered on his travels is the image of the two little boys who, with curious but serious expressions, meet the photographer's gaze in the midst of play on a street in Paris. The image is typical of Strömholm's many portraits of children, images with a psychological depth that are all characterized by a loneliness and isolation that may be found in Strömholm's own childhood.