JH Engström
‘Dimma Brume Mist’
by JH Engström, published by Void.
“This work is an overview of the main lines in my archive. It approaches the oscillation between rural and urban, and between opposing yet complementary elements, emotions and thoughts. Also, between the images and the words. My perspective is that of the observer rather than that of an active participant.
All the images in this book have been directly scanned from the contact sheets, and none of the images in the 672-page book has previously been published.”
JH Engström
Dimma Brume Mist
‘Dimma Brume Mist’ was born from over two hundred binders containing thousands of contact sheets and negatives. Over the course of five years, JH Engström periodically returned to this archive, mining deep within the overlooked to search for the common thread present throughout his 35-years of image-making. His ambition was not to create a ‘best of’ collection, nor a summary of previous books, but to create something else entirely. The result is ‘Dimma Brume Mist’—an epic book of previously unpublished photographs and text.
The framework of a book emerged in the early stages of Engström’s excavation of his archive. He began forming pairs and sequences of images which oscillated between opposite and complementary elements such as between rural / urban, movement / stillness, inner / outer, security / insecurity, child / adult, reflection / impulse, self / other, nature / civilisation. As the book evolved a second type of oscillation developed between images and words—forming the building blocks for the book.
“I had a conviction that it is not within the ‘good image’ that poetry lives, but rather in the movement, energy, searching and doing. A conviction about the power of getting close and when perfection is not reached. The dizziness of when the fumbling continues even though it will never result in the final. The beauty of that fumbling.”
JH Engström
The texts—reproduced in Swedish, French and English—are short, stripped down simple notes either referring to childhood memories, random thoughts which arose in connection with Engström’s artistic search or ongoing inner monologue. He views the images as the engine and the texts as a braking system, preventing the reader from rapidly flipping through the book so as not to miss them. All the images are vertical to reference books beyond the defined category of photobook—leaving ‘Dimma Brume Mist’ uncategorisable.
To maintain a simplicity and directness, the images in the book have been scanned straight from the contact sheets and are presented without captions. They are undusted and scratches, damage and other traces of time have been left exactly as they were when the contact sheet was removed from the binder. The imperfection of the images is symptomatic of the weathering and disintegration of memory with time.
The Collector’s Edition
Limited edition of 10
Limited edition of 10
Framed vintage contact sheet, one-of-a-kind from the artist’s archive.
Collector’s Edition in a run of 10 + 3 APs.
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Certificate of Authenticity
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Riso Print Obi
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Copy of ‘Dimma Brume Mist’
Contact Sheets edition: 1/1
Every collector’s edition comes with a different contact sheet.
Please note that the product’s thumbnail is a digital render, and doesn’t represent the actual object. Actual photos will be updated once the object is produced.
Dimma Brume Mist
20,2 x 25 cm
672 pages
750 copies
Softcover
Text by JH Engström, in Swedish, French & English
ISBN 978-618-5479-42-8
Collector’s Edition
Limited edition of 10 copies
With a framed vintage contact sheet,
one-of-a-kind from the artist’s archive
Contact Sheet: aprox 24 x30,5 cm (Frame dimension: 25 x 35 cm)
Edition of 1/1
JH Engström
Born in Karlstad in 1969, JH Engström is a Swedish photographer and video artist. As a child his family moved from provincial Sweden to Paris when he was 10. In 1993 he settled in Stockholm and shared a lab with Anders Petersen whilst attending Gothenburg University school of photography, graduating in 1997. Engström then moved to New York between 1998–2000, where he spent time at Robert Frank’s studio. In 2012, JH Engström and Margot Wallard established the first one-year long photography workshop, Atelier Smedsby. His work has been exhibited widely, including The Finnish Museum of Photography; Värmlands Museum, Sweden; Hôtel Fontfreyde, Clermont-Ferrand, France; FOAM Amsterdam; National Media Museum, UK, and the Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg. His work is in the collections of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Musée Nicéphore Nièpce, France. He has authored numerous publications, and four films and videos. He was awarded the Leica Oskar Barnack Prize 2015, the Golden Letter (La Résidence) 2012, the Rencontre d’Arles photobook prize 2009 and shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photographic Prize in 2005, amongst others. Engström lives and works between Paris and Värmland, Sweden.
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GREECE, Void
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Photograph: JH Engström
Text: JH Engström
Printing: Jelgavas tipogrāfija
Binding: Jelgavas tipogrāfija
Language: Swedish, French, English
JH Engström © for the photographs and text
Void © for this edition