Stockholm 2006. Ur serien Vinter

Someone has sculpted a standing figure in snow that seems soiled by car fumes. A cheerful smiley spray-painted in black on its somewhat phallic “head” makes it resemble the graffiti found in public toilets. The three buttons sprayed down its middle are familiar from more ordinary snowmen. This grubby, armless apparition fills most of the frame, and a few coloured lights glow warmly in the distance – traffic lights, burning Christmas stars, or lamps in someone’s home or office?  

This picture is from Lars Tunbjörk’s Winter series from 2006; it was shown the following year at Moderna Museet in the exhibition Winter / Home. This project was a way of dealing creatively with the gloom that often afflicted him in the winter. It comprises a hundred or so photos, taken in the winter in a few Swedish cities in the early 2000s, often in sharp flash light. The series ranges from nuances of grey and brown, with explosions of colour in the bright blue wall of a shabby eatery, a vibrant turquoise fence or a glossy red Chinese restaurant.

Lars Tunbjörk worked in a tradition between documentary and art photography; his breakthrough came with a photographic series on Swedes on holiday, in the book Country Beside Itself. Pictures from Sweden, in 1991.