Italia, 2017
Italia reveals the evolution of a photographic writing that seems to find its peak. Taking away from both the more documentary approach of his previous series (Ocean, Lowlands, Tractor Boys…) and his influences (Swedish photography is a heritage heavy with references), Martin Bogren has travelled through Italian cities without any real goal. It was a question for him of getting lost, of drawing a path without any predefined intention.
His wanderings are therefore not only spatial but also mental and emotional. It is understandable that if Italia is a poetic journey, the series is also a journey of initiation. Here, there is no real subject, but an intimate narrative that becomes the sensitive affirmation of the author’s subjective visions.
All in shades of grey, the subtle and highly sensual prints reinforce his images of wanderings, dreamlike and sometimes disturbing, completely out of time. We follow him with fascination in these wanderings, as if we were penetrating his dream, between striking portraits that seem to be apparitions (strange children, characters straight out of a tale, faces of madonnas that are as many celestial visions), streets full of bright lights, landscapes bordering on abstraction.
With Italia, Martin Bogren takes an uncalculated risk: that of letting go, of getting lost, but above all of surrendering himself, with delicacy and without ostentation. Italia is the quest for something beyond photography, a way of being intense, a moving gesture of surrendering oneself to the world.
Caroline Bénichou
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