Gerry Johansson: Halland [signed]

Re-visiting the landscape of his childhood.

Gerry Johansson writes:
”In 1985, I published the book ”Halland, 1932 to 1982”. It was a photography project about Halland, a provinces in Southwestern Sweden, where I grew up.

This was once the poorest part of Sweden with farming and fishingIng as the main source of income, but in the 20s the landscape was reshaped by power plants and dams when growing industries needed more electrical power. 50 years later, in the 80s, when I followed in the tracks of Swedish photographers Mårten Sjöbäck and C G Rosenberg the area had settled into a quite and prosperous part of Sweden.
However, soon after the book was published the wind energy companies entered the landscape. At first with small wind turbines, usually owned by local farmers, and gradually growing into larger wind turbine farms run by investors and electrical companies.
Many of the early wind turbines, in the coastal region, has now been dismantled and has been replaced with big farms in the forest, and mountain, landscape in the inner of Halland.

My pictures were made from 2015 to 2019. This is mainly a book about the nature and the landscape of Halland. Inspired by the poetic words of Mårten Sjöbäck ringing in my ears.

The sky throws a vault over Halland
which often raises smallness
and mediocrity to monumentality
and lends to the little the measure of greatness.

Mårten Sjöbäck, 1931