INTERVIEW w/ LINA SCHEYNIUS

When I first saw Swedish-born photographer Lina Scheynius's work last year, I felt almost shy looking at the combination of frank sexuality and delicate, even fragile intimacy that she captures with her camera. Her photographs are so fearless, pure, and good, they scared me, or at least provoked a kind of awe and timidity in the face of such courage. The visceral quality of her photographs is conveyed through fluid lines, supple colors and deep shadows, and dark, sexy scenes that seem to both whisper and clamor. She takes her camera into a darkened bedroom, a hot, cloudy shower, and then outside, into a reddened sunset. I was immediately drawn into her work and wanted to know the thinking behind her approach, her philosophy toward the medium, and where she would go from here. The following conversation took place via email, from April to July of this year.

Lina currently has a book of her photographs for sale here.

This interview is co-published by, and also available in, the first issue of Wassenaar Magazine.

1. My Almost-Forced Disregard of the Viewer

This is That: Your images are so striking on first look because of this kind of dark, sexy, raw atmosphere you capture. And the longer I look, the more evocative the intimacy becomes. Instead of feeling like I'm peeking into this world, like a voyeur, I feel like you’re inviting me to look. You're so confidently asking me to look at you and your world. What does photography mean for you, in the sense of how it captures moments in time and how it makes you, and your viewer, see the world? You seem to use it very much as a documentary tool. Do you hunt down your images? Or, do you let them happen, and surprise you—are you the kind of photographer who keeps her camera around her neck at all times, waiting?

Lina Scheynius: My favorite pictures are the ones I have taken completely without having a viewer in mind. When I work on my personal pictures the viewer doesn't enter my mind until I start the selection process for my website. And even then I try to not think about him or her. If I did, I think a larger section of my work would remain unseen, as a lot of it is extremely personal to me and not initially captured to be viewed by others, but more as you mentioned, to document. Or experiment. I guess that it is my almost forced disregard of the viewer that gives you the impression that I am fearless.

I just bought a tiny film camera that I can carry around for my diary series. But I am definitely not someone who has a camera around at all times. Fact is that I take very few photographs, and I am very selective when I take them. I don't hunt for images. I let them come to me through moments in my life, and occasionally I create them. There is a tiny section on my website called “red” with photographs against a pink sky. I was in my room on the phone to one of my best friends and noticed how amazing the sky looked so I told my friend to hold on for a sec, and then I climbed out on the roof with my Polaroid camera and very quickly shot some self-portraits against the sky. That is exactly how I love working.





2. How to Tell a Story

TisT: What I like, too, about seeing your images together in series, is the feeling of time that elapses. It reads somewhat like a journal (especially the "diary" series, obviously), in that faces start to become familiar, moments bleed into other moments. When you compile your series, are they taken from one stretch of time, or do you pull them from all over, creating something newly complete in the process? Can you talk a bit about your process in pulling together your work into series?

LS: It is actually a combination of both. The pictures in the diary series are taken during the same period of time just like a written diary, but other series are definitely more random if you consider when and where they were taken. I find it highly fascinating how you can tell a completely different story with almost the same images just by changing the order of them or adding or subtracting a few. I try to just do it by instinct and not put too much thought into the process. It's not too dissimilar to how I work when I take the photographs.

TisT: You touch on your fascination of how stories get told through photos. When did this fascination start? Was there a moment or a work or an artist or something you saw that introduced you to this kind of storytelling through different arrangements of images?

LS: We had a photographic book at home by Swedish photographer Åke Hedström called Emma that I think might be the thing photography-wise that has touched me the most. I was very young, probably around four, when I first saw it and very fascinated by the images and the story told. It is a father’s portrait of his very ill daughter. She goes in and out of hospital and in the end she dies from eating a brazil nut. Still today when I flick through it, it moves me greatly.

TisT: On your website, your series are lined up with each other, so that your fashion work sits right next to your personal and diary series. The overall effect is one that, though seemingly disparate in theme or content, ends up being very cohesive. Going back to this idea of telling stories, your work taken as a whole, for me, tells a very complete story, whether it's fashion or diary, etc. Can you talk a little about where you pull your inspiration, intent, or ideas for your portraiture or fashion work? What I love about these works is how they maintain the same feeling as your more intimate series. I'm curious to know if you see an overlap or a commingling there.

LS: For my magazine work I try to always work in an as similar process as possible to my personal work. I like to keep it intimate by working in really small teams of people that I enjoy having around. I also try to be spontaneous and not plan anything more than where I will be and who I will be there with. Furthermore I want it to be fun and I never take 100 similar versions of the same picture. I was a model before I became a photographer and I think the process of most fashion shoots I have been on is very draining and gives a pretty stale result. Usually there are too many people around all trying to do an amazing job and too much time is spent on things in general.

When it comes to what inspires me I don't think I make a difference between my personal work and fashion or portraits.





3. The Instant Itself Can Never Be Changed

TisT: I love the idea you talked about with your "forced disregard of the viewer," and your letting the images come to you and happen as your life happens. It's always been a point of interest for me as a photographer, that the medium is one of documentation. Where it can get tricky, or maybe interesting is a better word, is this idea of who gets to see those documents, and how they are important as little objects themselves. Are they documents for me, or for a viewer? Is the moment elevated or glamorized now that there is a photo of it? There's something inherently public about a document, the need to preserve something, or this kind of tangible memory. For you, after you capture your moments (like the “red” photos, which are some of my favorites), does the fact that you've photographed them ever change the memory for you? I guess what I'm trying to say is, does photographing these instances change, for better or worse, the instant itself?

LS: That is a very philosophical question about memory and time and people's perception. In my opinion the instant itself can never be changed. Yes, bringing out a camera has already made the moment different from if one hadn't brought it out. But the fact that there is a photograph of it doesn't change what happened. Only perhaps the memory of it. My memory of it. The importance of it in relation to other instances that might be similar but not remembered.

Bringing in a viewer gives the instant even more importance in relation to others. It doesn't really make the single picture more important to me. I am not sure, but it could even be the contrary as it is no longer a secret personal thing but some kind of official object.

But the image itself gets a new and perhaps more important life with all these eyes viewing it and hopefully relating to it in whatever way.

On another note I have noticed that bringing out these instances in public has an effect on the future ones. For better or worse.

Six months ago someone sent me an email after having found my work online and asked if he could publish my personal work on his blog. Later he arranged an exhibition in Paris and asked me if I wanted to take part, and we met up and I fell in love, and my newly published diary series is very much about him.





4. A Series of Very Intimate Images

TisT: Since you mentioned your latest work focusing around your new love, I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about what you've been working on recently, or what you're planning for the future? I'd like to know a bit about how you see your development and trajectory as a photographer. Where did you start, and where are you going?

LS: My diary is a constant ongoing project. It is not a new or original idea at all. It is something I have, like most people with a camera, been shooting since I got my first camera. It is very affected by what I see and where and how I live. So it is only natural that the people I spend a lot of time with end up changing it in one way or another. I love seeing the process of this.

As for where I am heading as a photographer—I don't really know. I only started to bring other people in to my work process just over a year ago. And a lot has already happened since then that I couldn't really have predicted. I am now represented by an agent in New York and have started to shoot fashion and portraits for big magazines. It will definitely lead me somewhere, but I do not know where. I am hoping it will be to a place where I can be proud of the images I take, and free to experiment.

At the moment I am working a lot with my first self published book that I just started selling last week. I am accepting orders and sending out e-mails and running to the post office. Hopefully I will sell so many that I will get the money I have invested back so I can afford to make another one (and another one and another one...)

I have actually already started working on the next one in my head. I want it to be a series of very intimate images taken during my last relationship, shown in chronological order.

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I’d like to thank Lina Scheynius for her participation. For more information about her work, please visit linascheynius.com. I'd also like to thank Noel Rodo-Vankeulen for co-publishing via Wassenaar Magazine. Also, thank you to Brian Doose for administration help.