Weltschmerz
Jens Olof Lasthein
Kult Books
English
Hardcover
Edition of 700
176 pages
175 × 240 mm
2026
ISBN 9789199023533
We live in times marked by authoritarianism, violence, and a disregard for human rights. The world feels divided and paralyzed, and this climate of uncertainty takes photographer Jens Olof Lasthein back to another tumultuous time. In the winter of 1991–92, Lasthein walked up and down Stockholm’s main pedestrian street, Drottninggatan, photographing people. He felt uneasy as his immediate world grew increasingly unsettled. The war in Croatia was clearly about to spread to Bosnia, the true melting pot of the former Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union was dissolving and formally ceased to exist on New Year’s Eve. At the same time, a man who came to be known as the “Laser Man” had begun shooting immigrants in Stockholm.
With his camera’s standard lens and focus fixed at one meter, Lasthein reacts quickly and intuitively—one flash exposure per person as they pass by. Some notice him, but most are so deeply lost in their own thoughts that they do not realize they are being captured on film. Everyone has their own story, their own small world, yet everyone threads their way through the crowd. The individual. The collective. And the shared world, fragmented and diverse though it may be. In the photographs, Lasthein saw reflections of his own unease.
Now, 34 years later, those expressions mirror Lasthein’s state of mind today. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is entering its fifth year with undiminished force. Israel’s government continues to bomb, displace, and starve the Palestinian population. Democratic principles and international law are being abandoned in the United States, while the climate crisis accelerates. Amid all this, individuals move through their own small worlds, carrying their worries alone.
(Source: https://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/en/insights/interview-jens-olof-lasthein)
About the Artist
Jens Olof Lasthein was born 1964 and has been working as a freelance photographer since 1992. He has held about 50 solo exhibitions around the world and published three books: Moments in Between about the Balkan wars in the 90ies, White Sea Black Sea about the borderland between eastern and western Europe, Home Among Black Hills with pictures from Charleroi in Belgium. His fourth book, Meanwhile Across the Mountain, with pictures from the Caucasus will be published during 2016 and will include the series from Abkhazia with which he won the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2010.
https://www.lasthein.se
(Source: https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/collection/artists/claudia-andujar)
About the Publisher
Kult Books is an independent publishing project for photography and other lens-based visual arts founded by Janne Riikonen in Stockholm, Sweden. Kult Books publishes monographs and artist books that embrace a personal artistic vision and visual language. The publications are created in close collaboration with the artists, the physical form designed to support the concept of the work.
https://kultbooks.com
(Source: https://kultbooks.com/about)
