August Song - Agence VU'

August Song

Martin Bogren

Departing from the more documentary approach of his previous series (Ocean, Lowlands or Tractor Boys) and his influences – Swedish photography is a heritage heavy with references – Martin Bogren photographed balls in the Swedish countryside for several summers and gives us an intimate and vertiginous account that condenses in a way the sensitive affirmation of his subjective visions.
We follow him with fascination: he interferes, slowly at first, this August Song, between the photographs. It’s summer, there’s no doubt about it. At dusk, as the sun is falling on the trees, men and women slowly enter the scene. Already, in the middle of the countryside couples are making and breaking up, impatient bodies are waiting or gathering.
This is the ball. Night may well fall, time may well pass, nothing else matters but the intoxication of alcohol, hugging, feverish waiting, kisses exchanged or hoped for.
Then the fever wins, everything seems to accelerate, hugs, alcohol vapors, body to body. Vertigo takes over, and one spins around, exhilarated with the photographer in the midst of new lovers, dancers in the light, women’s bright eyes, dead drunken friends.
Like a moving allegory of the urgency to live before everything is consumed and to surrender to love, to lose oneself in the arms of the other, this series by Martin Bogren tells the intense way of being of a photographer who relies on the world.

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