Jens Olof Lasthein


Jens Olof Lasthein is a Swedish freelance photographer. His widely exhibited work principally covers scenes before and after the war in former Yugoslavia and the areas across Europe bordering the old Iron Curtain.

Early life

Born in Sweden in 1964, Lasthein grew up in Denmark. After school, he travelled widely in Asia and eastern Europe. He worked in a shipyard and as a bus driver before studying photography at Nordens Fotoskola in Stockholm.

Photography

Since 1992, Lasthein has lived in Stockholm and worked as a freelance photographer for magazines and newspapers as well as on his own projects. Two of his major projects, which have formed the bases of his exhibitions and have also been published in book form, are described below.

Moments in Between

Moments in Between presents photographs taken before, during and after the wars in the former Yugoslavia. According to Lasthein, it is an "attempt to understand life in the shadow of war".

White Sea, Black Sea

White Sea, Black Sea documents a journey along the eastern border of the European Union from Arkhangelsk in the north to Odessa in the south. It explores the transition of the borderland between eastern and western Europe. Lasthein explains that his interest in eastern Europe began when he spent a week in Moscow in 1982 followed by two months hitchhiking in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1984. The first photographs to become part of the project were actually taken in St Petersburg in 1993 while he was doing a photographic report on the Russian mafia. Lasthein's project was reinforced by his irritation at a tendency in western Europe for people to forget about the areas of Europe to the east of the EU borders. He also sought to visit places which would help to provide answers to existential questions about who we are and why we are here.
In Lasthein's own words:
Basically the idea is to take the viewer on a visual journey through the borderland between European East and West. Not claiming any kind of truth, the conditions are decided by myself alone, in relation to my own internal boundaries: What can it be like being European? An attempt to open up some borders – my own, and maybe even others.

Panoramic views

Lasthein's photographs are taken with a panoramic camera which gives them a Cinemascope appearance. He became acquainted with the technique in 1991 when he followed the work of film directors Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa. Using an extremely wide angle of 140°, he decided to apply it to still photography. It provided possibilities of complexity, allowing more than one story to be included in the picture. It also gave him scope for theatrical scenes where everything is happening at once. Finally, he believes the technique creates conditions for the viewer to believe in the picture.

Assessment

Commenting on White Sea, Black Sea, Swedish photographer Marie Lundquist sees a special kind of Slavic melancholy in Lasthein's pictures. Some of the photographs convey such a homely feeling that they look as if they have been taken from a family album. But they are not just about people ; they also show the surrounding environment with empty waiting rooms, overgrown road signs or geese marching towards a cathedral. The use of panorama allows the photographer to depict everyday scenes, often with a humorous touch, in which different people react to each other. Lasthein also has an ability to make use of the warm afternoon light to create an overwhelming sense of space, extending far beyond the narrow pages of the book.

Books

Jens Olof Lasthein's website also lists the following recent solo exhibitions: