Sten Didrik Bellander (born in 1921) was one of the Swedish
photo-graphers who formulated the pictorial style that
characterised Swedish photography during the 1950s and '60s.
His photographs were inspired by the humanist photographers
in France like Edouard Boubat and Robert Doisneau. Bellander's
pictures have a purity and austerity in composition, showing
natural forms and lyrically describing light and shadow - a
cultivation of the essentials.
Curator: Leif Wigh
Sten Didrik Bellander's (b.1921) photographs have a liberal,
humanistic consciousness as well as a pronounced sense of
form and thorough mastery of technique. His still lifes contain
elements of chance and spontaneity, but also have a
concentrated presence. His portraits are humorous but with a
surrealistic aspect that only becomes evident after a time.
The Swedish photographers who first inspired Bellander in the
early 1940s were Ferdinand Flodin, Arne Wahlberg and Rolf
Winqvist. When the Second World War ended in the
mid-1940s, Bellander began to seek inspiration from
photographers outside Sweden, especially those working in
American picture and fashion magazines like Vogue and
Harpers Bazaar.
Bellander began to make photographs as a schoolboy in the
1930s.
Already by the '40s his pictures had been noticed by
specialist photo journals like FOTO and the Nordisk Tidskrift
för Fotografi. While still at school, he worked during the
summer holidays for Sandels Illustration Bureau, a picture
agency that the press photographer, Karl Sandels had
established in 1934. The young Bellander assisted the
photographers at the same time as he learned about
developing negatives and other darkroom skills. In 1944 his
work was sufficiently known that it was chosen by a jury to be
included in the National Museum's exhibition Modern
Swedish Photography .
At the beginning of 1947 he went to New York to study
photography. For several months he took courses in
advertising and portrait photography. During the autumn of
the same year he was employed as an assistant by Richard
Avedon. Courses were also organised at the studio by the
main designer of Harpers Bazaar, who taught with Richard
Avedon and Irving Penn.
Back in Stockholm in 1948, Bellander took over Savoy's
Atelje on Drottninggatan, which was quickly turned into a
meeting place not only for the young photographers of the
time, but also for writers and intellectuals. Stimulated by his
experiences in America and the work of his contemporaries,
he together with his friends arranged in 1949 the influential
Young Photographers exhibition which attracted enormous
attention and stimulated discussion long after it ended. There
were several reasons for this: the photographers had given
their pictures surrealistic names and had shown a lack of
respect for tradition, especially that of portrait photography.
The exhibition was also shown in Gothenburg and Paris, and
several years later, in a somewhat revised form, it was
mounted in New York.
Sten Didrik Bellander attracted attention once again in 1954
when he was the winner of the newspaper Svenska
Dagbladet's major photography prize. The same year he had a
solo exhibition at Bankhallen in central Stockholm. The
following year, he both sat on the jury and participated in the
National Museum's large exhibition of Swedish Photography
Today - Black and White. In 1958 he helped organise the
group, Tio Fotografer (Ten Photographers), which included
several of Sweden's most respected photographers. Some of
these photographers had participated in the epoch-making
exhibition Young Photographers, an experience that had
helped to consolidate their friendship. In 1961-62 Bellander
participated in Moderna Museet's exhibition Swedes as Seen
by Eleven Photographers, and after being seen there, several
of his pictures became recognised as classics. Since this
exhibition Bellander has mainly been shown in group
exhibitions together with colleagues from Tio or in shows
which have focused on his work's specific conceptual
character.
The exhibition now on view at Moderna Museet is one of the
few solo exhibitions that Bellander has made. Sten Didrik
Bellander - Photography 1939-1999 contains photographs
from an artist who has had many students and who has
inspired countless other photographers.
This exhibition could never have been realised without the
chairman of the Swedish Photographers' Union, Ake
Hedstrom, who has helped in all possible ways to make the
photos available.
Curator: Leif Wigh
Related Links: