Jesper + Mathias: Peace & Lovers

The photography duo Jesper Hammarbäck and Mathias Persson met at Linjepunkt Repro AB in Falun, Sweden, where they work retouching images. The combination of Jesper’s image interest in general and newfound love of photography with Mathias’s devotion to photography that stems back to the era of negative and transparency, has created the idea for their own photography. 

By letting themselves be inspired by many famous and world renowned photographers like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Bruce Weber, they did extensive test photography to investigate techniques and range. When it comes to portraits, Jesper and Mathias admire Avedon’s direct contact with his subjects. 

Mathias grew up in Säter and his first festival experience goes back to DalaRock which happened during the 1980’s in nearby Hedemora. Jesper grew up in the Peace & Lovers’ city Borlänge and has been to all the festivals since the beginning and performed in 2004 with the band One Motion.

The bases of Peace & Lovers is Avedon’s book In the American West where the characters reflect the American west in the early 1980’s. In that study as well as in this it is obvious that the photographers are dependent on their subjects to be able to create a complete image. 

In Peace & Lovers it is the audience in focus and we understand that they, as participants, create the festival. Call it a homage, or even a borrowed technique, but the result in Peace & Lovers is striking and an unique document of our time. Peace & Lovers is series of personalities who visited and participated in the Peace & Love festival in 2010 in Borlänge, Sweden