LB°24 — Participants

Tommy Tommie

Tommy Tommie (b. 1941, Stockholm) is a photographer based in Töre, Norrbotten.

Tommy Tommie’s as yet unpublished photographic series Can Sweden do without Norrbotten? depicts the Norrbotten of the 1970s and 80s. With this project, Tommy aimed to make a comprehensive portrait of Norrbotten as a society, with motifs ranging from fishing, midnight sun, and “spring winter”, to industrial sites, protest movements, the struggle for work and against relocations to the south. The series also represents cultural life, theatres and popular education programmes. The photographs are poetically composed encounters between people, barren landscapes, industries, crowds and slogans. They are a product of the photographer’s social engagement, and his newfound awareness of Norrbotten’s uniqueness and centrality. The project was just about to go to print before life interfered and stopped the publication. Now, more than 40 years later, the Luleå Biennial is proud to present parts of this epic work in exhibitions at the Luleå konsthall and at Havremagasinet in Boden.

Tommy Tommie is one of Sweden’s foremost photographers. He moved from Stockholm to Norrbotten in the early 1970s to work as a teacher of photography at Kalix folkhögskola. Prior to that, he had worked with the group Bildaktivisterna [The picture activists] in Stockholm. The group was founded on the dictum of putting solidarity and human value before profit, and to counter bourgeois indoctrination by disseminating alternative information to the public.

As a direct continuation of this initiative, Tommy Tommie started Norrbottens bildgrupp [The Norrbotten Picture Group]: a collective of photographers. potters, painters, art students, drawing teachers, preschool teachers, and journalists made exhibitions in all sorts of spaces and used all sorts of techniques. The ideas of Bildaktivisterna echoed further in activist engagements with new media in Norrbotten. Tommy Tommie was also involved in the organising the magazine Norrlandsbulletinen, which started its activities in 1971. The magazine encouraged people to document their surroundings through pictures and text. Topics tended to include the struggle for work in the area, maintaining services, protesting forced relocations, and the right to dignified working conditions.

Tommy Tommie (b. 1941, Stockholm) is a photographer based in Töre, Norrbotten.