You are you and that's Okey! Photos from Stockholm

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It’s been a long time since I last shared a gallery of photos at TheSupercargo. I haven’t felt so much like carrying the camera the last few months, but I took it with me to Stockholm for the Stockholm Writer’s Festival. These are some pictures I took when I wasn’t attending the seminars, discussions and workshops. The graffiti statement “You are you and that’s Okey” seemed sufficiently upbeat (if a bit anodyne, despite the spelling mistake) to stand at the head of this.

Sineage

A chalked graffiti statement on a grey metal electrical cabinet in Stockholm reads: You are you and that's okey — You are you, and that’s Okey

A chalked graffiti note: I'm fine how about ... you. The the first four words are written on a metal plate, low down on a wall, the final word on the pavement where it has been partly erased by rain. — You are you, and that’s Okey

Fotografiska

On the Thursday (17th August), the day before the SWF23 started, I took myself off to visit Fotografiska – Stockholm’s widely praised photographic gallery/museum. There were exhibitions by several artists. As ever when I’m taking photos at an art display, it was a challenge to try to take pictures that didn’t just reproduce the images on display. These four were the best – though I still don’t really understand why Fotografiska was hosting Alexander Wessely’s sculpture exhibition Kortex. The big baby eyeing the wine glasses is just outside Fotografiska’s winebar. (As usual, click on any picture to view it complete in gallery mode.)

The massive head of a child on its side, with one golden eye and one pointed ear keeping watch over tables with wineglasses outside Stockholm's Fotografiska gallery — Keeping and eye and an ear on things

A sculpture of a twisted male torso carved in white marble and illuminated with a strong harsh white spotlight. The photograph is overexposed because of the bright light, such that the light seems to emanate from the figure. — Keeping and eye and an ear on things

Metro art

Travelling around on the Stockholm tunnelbana (underground/metro), even if you don’t go out of your way to find them, the decorations can surprise you. Both those that are intended (the silver feet under a pediment) and those that a graffiti artist has created. This one footlight in the Östermalm underground station had a print of beach pebbles carefully pasted over it, but in my photo it looks like the glass has been shattered. Outside the entrance to the Östermalm station I found a series of bollards shaped like animal totems. I’m pretty sure they were cast in concrete, but they look like the originals might have been cut by chainsaw in wood. Outside the Slussen station this group of sculptured children stood around a shallow pond gesticulating at one another.

On the approach to the Östermalm underground station, a plinth that seems supported by dozens of silver right feet. — Silver Toes in the Underground

Apparently an image of shattered glass is actually an image of pebbles pasted over the glass of a bright light in the floor of the Ostermalm metro station in Stockholm — Silver Toes in the Underground

Guerrilla bee and bananas

The night between Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th, Stockholmers and visitors ran in the Midnight Run (Midnattsloppet) on Söder. At the Zinkensdamm tube station closest to where I was staying, the litter bin was stuffed and overflowing with banana peel on Sunday morning. I pair these pictures with another, also dominated by yellow, my one successful nature picture of the trip. Far more by accident than design, I caught this bee just after it had visited the sunflower head. This was in a strip of guerrilla garden along by the building site that is the New Slussen interconnection. New Slussen has been building for I don’t know how many years.