Gröna Lund /1.

The photo book Gröna Lund is coming out soon !

It's now my eighth book, and the third presenting my work as a gardener, this time in a new, specific environment - an amusement park. The previous books on the same theme are Millesgården and Djurgården.

The pictures I present here represent what I believe is a completely new way of looking at Gröna Lund. Perhaps it's something like the way visitors feel at the end of a day spent in the park, their senses spinning after so many strong impressions, and perhaps a little dizzy from going on the roller-coasters; tired and happy, and taking home with them a heady mix of memories, sights, sounds and colours.

The foreword is in French and English (translation Graham Bowers).

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Front cover / back cover

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Five pages of the book

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From the Foreword...

The amazing lines, contours and silhouettes of Gröna Lund are surprisingly well-suited to being captured by pinhole camera – the amusement park is a huge assemblage of infrastructure, with the myriad overlapping and criss-crossing angles of the various buildings and wooden and metal structures, the seemingly endless ingenious confluences and crossings of beams, tracery and buttresses. (...)

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About the book

"Laurent Denimal's work is rooted in documentary photography, depictions of the workplace, but what he achieves is a strong artistic expression that can be read and experienced independently of the specific location, as an independent work in its own right.

(...) The optical unconscious that Walter Benjamin talks about: the power of photography to evoke and make visible when the image is given time to be interpreted. The viewer's curiosity is aroused."

Iréne Berggren

Photo historian and curator

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The photographs are captured with a pinhole panoramic camera (frame 24×56 mm), on 35mm colour film.

The camera is handmade by

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Technical data

Format: 233 x 130 mm, 96 pages, 63 panoramic colour photographs

Paper: Munken lynx 170g (insert), Munken lynx 400g (cover)

Open spine binding

Text in english: Graham Bowers

ISBN 978-91-527-3047-8

Weight: 275 g

First edition 300 copies, ©2022 Laurent Denimal (photo and text)

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Support

Financial support from the King Gustaf VI Adolf's fund for Swedish Culture and from the Swedish author fund has made publication of this book possible.

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The book is presented on a dedicated page on my website

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You can also follow the project on Instagram where I will publish the most recent news

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Djurgården, in the King's park.

The photo book Djurgården, in the King's park was released in 2014, and it's my second book documenting my work as a gardener.

Djurgården is now the world’s first national city park. It forms a green oasis just across the water from the city centre, and is the former royal deer park in Stockholm

In 2009 I was employed by the park management as a gardener on Djurgården. From early in spring until late autumn I spent my days on Djurgården with a Polaroid 600 camera in my pocket.

Polaroid photography provides unique, small­format images without a negative, limited to a single original photograph.The motif disappears at the very instant that it is caught, and the effect is imme­diate.

My photographs portray everyday life on Djurgården from the perspective of a gardener. The camera is always ready to capture the moment: people enjoying a walk in the woods, monuments and museums, the open water and impenetrable bushes.

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Twelve photographs from the book

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From the foreword, by Per Wästberg

"One day in May 1682, King Karl XI of Sweden noted in his diary: “I rode out to Djurgården in the morning and could hear the deer calling.” The striking thing is that we can still ride out to Djurgården and listen to the roe deer grazing there. We can see flocks of mergansers landing on the water at Ryssviken in February, or watch the dawn breaking over the island of Skeppsholmen and the southern regions of the park. On Sunday evenings the boats coming in from the archipelago send puffs of smoke into the air around the toylike tower on Kastellholmen while their wake breaks on the rocks and quays and the brightly coloured crab apples shine out among the dark leaves of the trees. (...)

Denimal has roamed the grassed expanses of southern Djurgården in his own fashion, stooping to observe the first spring blooms, absorbing the changing seasons, just touching upon the tourist clichés, occasionally including a face or capturing an unexpected detail. He prefers his immediate surroundings rather than the generalized view. This is Laurent Denimal’s personal view of Djurgården and that is how it should be: Each of us surely has his or her recollections of Stockholm and of what is, perhaps, Europe’s most beautiful park. And this view is constantly altered to accord with new discoveries and the vagaries of time. . (...)"

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The foreword is written by the Swedish author and member of the Swedish Academy Per Wästberg and the presentation by Laurent Denimal (texts in Swedish, French, English and German).

It is designed by Johannes Molin and edited by Carlsson Bokförlag in Stockholm.

Tommy Arvidson wrote about the book on his blog, "Om fotoboken".

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You vill find copies of

Djurgården, in the King's park

at the shop !

Delivery in 2 to 6 working days worldwide

Price: 190:- sek / 17 €

to the shop

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Millesgården, in the sculptor's park.

In 2008, I released my first photo book, Millesgården, in the sculptor's park.

The photo book Millesgården, in the sculptor’s park, takes you for a walk through the sculpture park in the grounds of the house formerly belonging to Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1875-1955), located on the island of Lidingö, outside Stockholm.

As you walk around the gardens with their terraces, steps and fountains you will encounter not only statues, but gardeners, tourists, flowers, bushes and trees, all of which reflect the constantly changing rhythm of the seasons.

During the three years I was employed at Millesgården as a gardener, I carried with me a Vredeborch Felica camera (medium-format 6X6), and documented the everyday life in the park.

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Twelve photographs from the book

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From the foreword, by Agneta Pleijel

"A park, a garden, some sculptures, a borderland between nature and culture. Stone moulders, eaten away by vegetation and biology in the shape of spores. Here, time rocks us. What is time, if not an exercise in the art of a change that is so slow that man’s life is too short for it?

Nothing keeps still. Water dissolves and creates new forms.

The leaves of the ivy stroke gently the pierced feet of the Crucified. The spade rests for a moment in the hand of the gardener. Snow becomes light which becomes shadows. In real life, we often feel cold, but a strange calm reigns in this park. I love and admire Laurent Denimal’s photographs, they are peaceful and yet able to carry you away.

To see a flower blooming by the side of a stone is a miracle. Is it not old Poseidon, who has laid his head aside in order to ponder on life for a while? The notes played by the angel on his flute of stone ring out between some frosty twigs. An army of winged beings conquers the town, in the distance, with its music of stone that resounds with silence. (....)"

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The foreword is written by the Swedish author Agneta Pleijel and the presentation by Laurent Denimal (texts in Swedish, French and English).

It is designed by Johannes Molin and edited by Carlsson Bokförlag in Stockholm.

Stefan Nilson (Nerikes Allehanda) wrote an article about the book.

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An artist's edition containing twenty autographed copies of the book is presented in a black slipcase with one numbered and signed original print (silver gelatine and C-print), with a size of 18 x 18 cm. There are four different motiv.

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You vill find copies of

Millesgården, in the sculptor's park

at the shop !

Delivery in 2 to 6 working days worldwide

Price: 170:- sek / 15 €

to the shop

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