Author Peo Olsson on documenting the reconstruction processes of the artist Björn Lövins oeuvre.

This book contains photographs whose origins and domicile are under negotiation. The basis of the project is made of the original archive photographs of a series of exhibitions by installation artist Björn Lövin in the 70s and 80s, via images from a digital reconstruction of the same exhibits and ending with documentary photographs from a physical reconstruction process at Moderna Museet in Sweden in 2022.

Awarded “Swedish Book Art Award” 2024.

Taking place between the covers of this book is a kind of photographic dissolution and recollection which is the result of many years of researching Björn Lövin’s world. An encounter between visual documentation from different places—from the archives, via a reconstruction in a digital space and back to the physical. The ”image of” moves between different materialities and places, both mental and mechanical. Less accessible spaces that through the images’ existence can iibe demonstrated and be imagined. What does the image look like after being transfered?

The documentation process raised questions about the inherent characteristics of photography, the photographic layers and their relation to each other. When transported, the photographic imprint, its indexicality, is stretched and adjusted, doubling back in the end. While the focus has been on Björn Lövin’s environments, there has at the same time been a dissolution of some of the basic premises of photography: form, thought, meaning change places with light, reflection, glow. And back again.

Björn Lövin’s (1937–2009) multi-faceted body of work consists of installations, paintings, sculptures, texts and videos. Through his environments, which have previously been presented at institutions such as Moderna Museet and Kulturhuset in Stockholm, and Centre Pompidou in Paris, he became one of Sweden’s first installation artists.