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ELKE'S INFO

Bengt Holgerson, graphic artist, photographer, painter and film maker, was born in Hammarby in Stockholm, in 1971. His father was a welder and his mother a dancer (she had worked as a Can-Can girl in the Moulin Rouge in Paris). He has traveled widely in Europe and America, and lives in Sweden. He is best known for his erotic photography and graphics.

While using a variety of photographic styles, he usually follows a rough and ready presentation, preferring that to the highly managed appearance of much erotic art. "I prefer to let the beauty of the model speak for itself ", Holgerson tries to avoid setting himself between the viewer and the subject: "I try to allow the (usually correct) impression that the model has been caught in a more or less natural moment, in which, despite everything, her personality is the main element of the eroticism".

This personal style has enabled Holgerson to produce images of a highly sexual nature without the objectification which he sees in much pornography and even erotic art: "quite simply real sex should look like sex, and sex should look like fun. Pornography often fails to look like real sex, and often doesn't even look like fun, while erotic art often tries not to look like sex and is therefore no fun.


Holgerson is not enthusiastic about modern art, especially not of the big movements in conceptualization which have dominated the previous century, and this one. "CJ Jung points out that 'Conceptualization offers a protection against experience', and the cleverness of modern art theory simply excludes normal people and their experiences, and raises the status of the artist beyond what is reasonable or necessary. There are 100s of 1000s of highly skilled and original artists, probably consigned to the 2nd or 3rd rank, whose work is to me truly inspiring and endlessly fascinating." says Holgerson. " You have to search below the frothy surface of the elite galleries and the conceptualizations that support the successful modern artists, to find the human instinct to represent our world and our presence in it, still thriving. The mere act of trying to mix a colour is a spiritual act of dedication to the earth we are on. The idea that representative art is redundant or meaningless compared to the platitudes of concept art, is akin to saying that ancient cave drawings are bourgeois. Most of the 'concepts' behind conceptual art can easily be written on the back of a cigarette packet, and are about as interesting as a government health warning"
	"If artists want to rebel" says Holgerson, "they should rebel against the intellectualization of art and against the now completed abolition of aesthetics. That abolition was the dubious achievement of the last century, and its main effect was to take power away form the artist, and give it to the gallery owner. For without aesthetics there can be no judgment, and without judgment there is only the success created by marketing and promotion." "It is often the smaller galleries who are brave enough to swim against the tidal current of modern theory and practice, and who support the lone and self trained artists who uphold the ideals of beauty in art"
	" The enjoyment of sex and the human form in art is the strongest assertion of the validity of aesthetics; sexual desire is as radical and visceral an assertion of a craving for beauty as can be. The right to enjoy sex in art is a light-hearted gesture of defiance to the regime of concept art. Art , like sex, should be beautiful , and fun.
	"My own personal taste is for the Scandinavian painters of the late 19th century. As painters of light and painters of nature they easily surpass, in my opinion, the French painters, especially the impressionists, of the same period, except Corot. "
	"My own purpose in photography is simply to create images that people can enjoy. I like to make the presence of the photographer as small a part of it as possible; its not the photographer people want to look at. As in any art form, where there is a strong presence of the artist this is an accidental inadvertent result of the peculiarity of his vision, he is not aware of it. No good artist wants to deliberately "put his imprint " on nature, it just comes from the way he looks at it. If my work hangs on a gallery wall , or is on a tea-mug, is equally exciting to me. I am grateful if anyone enjoys looking at it.
I have always liked drawing and painting, both my parents encouraged me. My father gave me a camera he won in a game of cards at work. I used to take pictures of old cars and aunts and uncles; now I take pictures of beautiful women, (and old cars and aunts and uncles)". About the deck of cards........

	Where did the images come from? Bengt Holgerson "The images for this deck of cards are drawn mainly from the photo sessions that took place in a Stockholm studio. Actually it was an old house with several rooms made available to us. The exuberant atmosphere of these sessions spills over directly onto the cards "You always have to try to make people feel comfortable and able to work in photo sessions. It is part of my job to do that. But sometimes it goes so well that the photographs are actually a record of an event in itself. Such was the case with the Stockholm sessions for this deck of cards. We all had such a lot of fun and it was a very intense few days, I don't think anyone slept all that much. We made some wonderful pictures, it was wild."		INTERVIEW with "SWEDISH ARTISTS"
	What do you mean by that? "To be honest I had to rein in some of the sexiness of that shoot. But the same people, Swedish Card Company, want me to do another deck, and they say I can really let go if I want to, so we will see what happens. You never know what a shoot will be like. It is a matter of people, timing and even location. We might go out into the country to do it, or maybe in Malmo. They have given me carte blanche, its a rare thing, a great opportunity. Publication is planned for 2012.

		Can you say more about your approach to photo shoots? "Photographs like these are not about the photographer and his ability, it's about the girls or the god that made them possible. My job is only to see what is there and capture it, to do portraits of girls of exceptional beauty. I'm just so grateful such beauty exists. Some pictures you just know you can use them 1000 times and still not exhaust its potential. Some girls are just so beautiful that you can hardly breathe when you are photographing them. I am not like some who claim not to be affected, or who claim that the models are just the raw material. For me it is a real privilege to be the recorder of their beauty. Whether the girls are to be congratulated or admired for their good fortune I don't know, but it is they who are the real artists. We admire Mozart for his God-given qualities, we can admire these girls for theirs; each one could have Amadeus as her middle name.


	Why have you used this style? "I wanted the cards to have a rough, home made look. It is usually the style I favour. There is so much in our modern society which seeks to marginalize the individual as opposed to the corporation; access to high tech operations is increasingly the preserve of the big money organizations. The clean lines of the modern technological look are the means to exclude the artist , unless he has been selected for success. I use a variety of materials to make my graphics, sometimes it is a computer, sometimes it is a brush and ink, or a piece of bread, or a pencil, or a spill of coffee. I base my aesthetic on the casual gracefulness of French cooking; Often in France you get the dessert and it looks a bit rough and squashed and smudged, and not at all as grand as you had expected, not what one finds in "French" restaurants outside France. The gateau de riz looks rather sad and brown. Then you take a bite.........then you realize not only that it tastes great, but that it is in fact presented with a careless grace, in a beautiful way, and you have missed it. I hope my cards can come somewhere near this gateau de riz.
*** * * * * Decks can be ordered at swedishcards@yahoo.com * * * * ***
	Why Cards? And why these images? "These cards show the tip of the iceberg. It is hard to squeeze all that we had into 54 small cards. But I like the format very much, I like even the abbreviation and the rough small images of partly obscured beauty. You can carry them around in your pocket and take them everywhere with you, and examine them when you are alone, and dream yourself into the presence of the people represented in the cards, the world I was lucky enough to be able to record in this brief format. Do you know what I do with them? I stick them up in various places, one in my car, some around my desk, in my wardrobe, in my wallet, and I leave them in public places. I have a pack on me at all times, and I am looking for someone who wants to play poker with me in a hotel lobby or a motorway service station, and then I take them out....maybe he gets a pleasant shock and unless he is left handed he gets one more little surprise."
	And by the way, Can you tell about the places you chose in the Poster Art series? ...Sometimes I drive from city to city in Europe or even parts of the USA, meeting people and taking pictures. Sometimes I visit the red light districts if there is one. I am a regular visitor I have made a series of pictures of my friends based on my experiences there. This is an ever expanding series. I always wait until there I something in particular to express about a town and my time there, and then I make a poster...