URBAN LANDSCAPES
For his new book 07:27:47, photographer Jonas Dahlström studied urban environments in Sweden. With the immediacy of street photography, he captured their beauty in a continuous sequence of images taking place during exactly 12 hours. Focusing on the interaction of light, shadows, and architecture, the aesthetics of his stunning photographs are strict, clear, and minimalist. Regardless, these external landscapes can be read as 'internal landscapes' projected outwards. They tell a tale of fragility, loneliness, and isolation, of human existence holding out in an anonymous, concrete habitat.

The images in 07:27:47 were all taken somewhere in Sweden between 2016 and 2020. Some of them have been made spontaneously, but most of them were systematically planned in terms of both hour and location. 

Dahlström sets out to capture the graphic aesthetics of constructed, urban environments, but also the relationship between these environments and the human being. The subjects are all in a state of transition, on a journey from one place to another, in time and in space. He intentionally obscures their identities and depicts them as symbols, representing any person rather than just themselves. Thus, their journey becomes a study of life and the human condition in an anonymous, urban space.

'Nevertheless, I have still been at the mercy of circumstances beyond my control,' says Jonas Dahlström. 'In my search for locations, I have travelled from Tomelilla in the south to Luleå in the north, from city centres to end-of-the-line suburbia. Whether I captured any images or not, I gathered many impressions along the way. I have granted myself valuable time to explore my country in a way that has been very enriching.'

Somewhere during this process, Dahlström started to ask himself why making these images had become so important to him and began to realise that the external landscapes that he wanted to capture were in fact projections of an internal landscape. 'Through my camera, I could see its contours emerge, with the city as a backdrop. An emotional state projected onto the streets and walls of the outer world.'

The result is a photographic narration about solitude and isolation, thoughts on identity and what it means to be human.

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