Jens Olof Lasthein

Jens Olof Lasthein (born 1964) is a Swedish freelance photographer. His widely exhibited work principally covers scenes before and after the wars in former Yugoslavia and other borderlands across Europe, for instance the area around the old Iron Curtain.

Early life

Born in Sweden in 1964, Lasthein grew up in Denmark. After school, he travelled widely in Asia and eastern Europe. He worked in a shipyard and as a bus driver before studying photography at Nordens Fotoskola (the Nordic Photo School) in Stockholm (1989–1992).

Photography

Since 1992, Lasthein has lived in Stockholm and worked as a freelance photographer for magazines and newspapers as well as on his own projects. Two of his major projects, which have formed the bases of his exhibitions and have also been published in book form, are described below.

Moments in Between

Moments in Between (1994–1999) presents photographs taken before, during and after the wars in the former Yugoslavia. According to Lasthein, it is an "attempt to understand life in the shadow of war".

White Sea, Black Sea

White Sea, Black Sea (2001–2007) documents a journey along the eastern border of the European Union from Arkhangelsk in the north to Odessa in the south. It explores the transition of the borderland between eastern and western Europe. Lasthein explains that his interest in eastern Europe began when he spent a week in Moscow in 1982 followed by two months hitchhiking in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1984. The first photographs to become part of the project were actually taken in St Petersburg in 1993 while he was doing a photographic report on the Russian mafia. Lasthein's project was reinforced by his irritation at a tendency in western Europe for people to forget about the areas of Europe to the east of the EU borders. He also sought to visit places which would help to provide answers to existential questions about who we are and why we are here.

In Lasthein's own words: Basically the idea is to take the viewer on a visual journey through the borderland between European East and West. Not claiming any kind of truth, the conditions are decided by myself alone, in relation to my own internal boundaries: What can it be like being European? An attempt to open up some borders – my own, and maybe even others.

Panoramic views

Lasthein's photographs are taken with a panoramic camera which gives them a Cinemascope appearance. He became acquainted with the technique in 1991 when he followed the work of film directors Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa. Using an extremely wide angle of 140°, he decided to apply it to still photography. It provided possibilities of complexity, allowing more than one story to be included in the picture. It also gave him scope for theatrical scenes where everything is happening at once. Finally, he believes the technique creates conditions for the viewer to believe in the picture.

Books

Christer Berglund (text); Jens Olof Lasthein (photographs). Het sommar. Stockholm: LL-förl., 1996. . In Swedish. Jens Olof Lasthein (photographs); Jesper Lindau (text). Moments in between: pictures from former Yugoslavia / bilder från forna Jugoslavien. Stockholm: Journal, 2000, 130 pp. . In Swedish and English. Jens Olof Lasthein. White Sea, Black Sea: bilder från gränslandet mellan Europas öst och väst. Stockholm: Max Ström, 2008, 170 pp. . Text in Swedish. Jens Olof Lasthein; Kevin Billinghurst (translation). White Sea, Black Sea: A visual journey along the eastern border of the European Union. Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2008. . Text in English. Jens Olof Lasthein. Home among black hills. Stockholm: Journal, 2014. . Text in English, French, Swedish and Korean. Jens Olof Lasthein. Meanwhile across the mountain: Pictures from the Caucasus. Max Strom, 2017. . Text in English. Jens Olof Lasthein. Far near. Sweden: Diep Publishing, 2022. .

Exhibitions Moments in between, Preus fotomuseum, Horten, Norway, 2003 The Border, Fotoforum West, Innsbruck, Austria, 2006 White Sea, Black Sea, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland, 2009 White Sea Black Sea, Month of Photography, Dom umenia, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2009 De la mer Noire à la mer Blanche. Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium, 2010

Awards ETC photo award (2001) Shortlisted for the European Central Bank annual photography award (2008) The Museum of Work, Norrköping, Sweden: Prize for documentary photography (2008) Leica Oskar Barnack Award (2010)