Lunar Cycles

A long-standing friend of C-print who we have featured previously on the site (then in a conversation with fellow artist Simon Mlangeni-Berg), we are delighted that our editor Koshik is working with artist Lotta Törnroth on a highly personal yet universal project Månvarv (Lunar Cycles). Published last year as an artist book on Blackbook Publications, it's soon about to open in a new iteration as a solo exhibition at Övre Galleriet, Konstnärshuset on May 10, 2025. For our latest feature, we present a conversation between the artist and the curator.

C-P: Our paths first crossed at the occasion of my first opening as a curator back in 2015. You were in the company of mutual friends and I remember we chatted over some drinks. Since, we’ve met several times in the studio, become friends, and here we are in 2025, soon about to present your new solo exhibition Månvarv at Konstnärshuset. I find it to be almost a “full circle” moment. At the core of the exhibition that we are working with is a most intimate personal project that dates back to 2005 when your late dad was first diagnosed. I’m very grateful for having been invited to take part in this generous process. I find it to be a very universal project about family dynamics, loss and grief. I think it will resonate with many people, even those who might not have experienced loss first-handedly like myself. What I also appreciate about the project is that there are also glimpses of hope and joy. One of the things that struck me during our conversations in the studio is how in the wake of your dad’s passing, your mom, his wife, and I paraphrase; “found the energy to live again”.

L.T: Yes, I remember our first encounter, you curated a beautiful photographic exhibition at the defunct gallery Kamarade in Stockholm. And yes, very much a ”full circle” or rather ”full moon”?

The story behind Månvarv is very personal and I have struggled a lot with that. Asked myself several times how I can continue this work and at the same time let other people in, and hopefully make them understand and maybe even relate? In the beginning I did not intend to work on this for 20 years, and during this time period I have worked on other projects about grief and loss but in a more conceptual way. I have been digging in to stories, both historical and mythical, knowing that I needed to finish my own narrative at some point. I started the project for me and my father, for our relationship.

My father had always been creative, loving photography and painting, and my wish when I started photographing him was that he would be part of the process. My father’s illness became a burden for him, and a struggle for the people close to him. His personality changed, he felt isolated when losing many friends and losing his independence. I wanted my father to be happy after everything that happened so the me became we, taking photographs together. This project has taken so many turns, I have photographed so many images and I have always come back to the feeling that this work is too private to show in public. And then when my father died in 2017, something happened with my gaze. Losing a family member, or someone close to you is something universal. Your grief might be personal but I think that it is in the collective you can learn how to verbalize your grief. You mirror yourself in others. My father was my mirror, and when I lost him I lost the person who helped me verbalize my thoughts. And my mother, the lighthouse of our family, she had been a caretaker for so long, I saw her blossom after all those years. Being almost like a little girl again, running barefoot on the rocks of Brännö, the island she has spent her summers on since she was 9 years old.

I think in the end, photographing both of them for so long time, hope and joy was important to put in the narrative. In the end, grief is not always dark.

C-P: Månvarv is also the title of your latest monograph (the fourth to date) published last year on Blackbook Publications, a label that you also co-run. As the project already exists in the printed format; would you like to share some of our ideas for the show?

L.T: If I remember correctly, in our first meeting, we talked about places that we love. In Månvarv there are places that are important to my family, landscapes that were significant for my father and still are to me. I read a quote from Darling River by Sara Stridsberg to you about photographers who revisits places where a loved once been. And I think this conversation set a tone when we started planning what and how to present the work as an exhibition. The book is full of images of my mother, even though my father is the protagonist, and in the exhibition there will be some portraits but it is not the main focus. We have focused on creating an exhibition that can be on its own, and I feel that the collection of full moons that have increased in number since the book was made is giving that feeling a push forward.

C-P: Since graduating in 2014 from Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki (MFA in Photography with a BFA prior from School of Photography, Faculty of Arts, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg), you have done a handful of residencies in places including Nuuk and New York, and have worked quite extensively internationally with your projects, e.g., South Korea. What dictates the places you visit? 

L.T: Often it starts with me hearing or reading about a landscape where many lives were lost to the sea, or a lighthouse that was built in vain, or families that became shattered at sea trying to find a better life. But I have also often went where literature have taken me, for instance the residency I did in Nuuk at the Art Museum was very much in the beginning about greenlandic mythology. I read Märta Tikkanen's Storfångaren before going to Nuuk, in the book Tikkanen tells about her visit to Greenland, and that book inspired me very much. She led the way for me during my first two months there, and I got so inspired when listening to habitants telling stories about how the sea can be so vicious and still they kept such a love for it. I went to Nuuk several times after that residency in 2017, the landscapes and narratives are endless. For me it has always been learning, listening and continue to be curious.

C-P: Besides many other things, you and I share an appreciation for the sea. In your case, it’s also central to your artistic practice. For me, it’s a source of so much joie de vivre. A place to recharge and just get lost. What is with the sea that draws you to it, and keeps you returning to it?

L.T: The easy answer is that I have since I was born spent all my summers on Brännö, an island in the Gothenburg archipelago, I even lived there all year round when I studied in Gothenburg. The sea often gets me calm, but I think the part of getting lost in it have been my biggest fear. I like being in control and you can’t control the sea, and when it is dark and stormy you really don’t want to be close to it. But that feeling, standing on the shore looking over an angry sea and then capturing that image with my camera, that’s my calm place. To experience the sea, it’s my worst nightmare but also what keeps me going.

C-P: I know that you’re also an avid reader. Text is also a key element in your practice. Would you like to share what you might be reading at the moment?

L.T: Of course, at the moment I am reading Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police. Before that I read Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq, and as I mentioned above, I read everything by Sara Stridsberg, Märta Tikkanen and other inspiring authors like Jeanette Winterson.

C.P: As somebody seasoned in terms of book publishing, both as an editor and artist, what are some of the considerations that to go into turning your work into a publication? Who are some of the people that have been involved in your own book projects?

L.T: When working on my books, it is often a long procedure from photographing and to the book being ready to be published it often take years. I realized when I published my first monograph in 2014 that it was such a god gift to give to arty people you meet, I was in New York on a residency at ISCP then and I spread my book in the wind. It got me some exhibitions, and very many contacts. But the super boring answer to your question is that from the beginning when I decide to make a book I start looking for stipends to apply for. But before that I have already started a dialogue with a writer and graphic designer (if I don’t decide to do the book myself). The most important thing for me is to work with people you like, and trust. I have been working with Dennis Hankvist and Johanna Sevholt with design and in all my books I have asked women I look up to to write texts or poems; Jenny Maria Nilsson, Iréne Berggren, Linda Bergman and Jessie Kleemann.

C-P: I find you to be a be a very congenial artist in the sense that you’re always out and about going to shows, supporting other artists. Who are some of the artists that have been important for your own practice?

L.T: I think all artists need to support each other, it can be such a lonely profession. And this is a thing that is super important to me, and you don’t have to go to every exhibitions you can show your support in other ways. There are so many I want to mention that are important, in terms of endless support whatever weird idea I get it is my husband Simon Blanck and my friend Alexandra Larsson Jacobson, who both work as artists. Adel Szakacs, a friend who always have wisdom to share, helped me so much in the beginning of my career. My artist friends at Gelb studios are super important and my photo book crew at Blackbook Publications are smart and fun to work with.

C.P: With the opening of Månvarv just around the corner, what else might be on the horizon this year, both personally and professionally?

L.T: I am finishing my fifth monograph Wake that hopefully will be published 2025. The book is about a ferry disaster in South Korea that happened in 2014, I’ve been going there three times photographing. Two years ago I wanted to wrap things up and I asked artist and curator Sookyoung Huh to write me a text which I was happy she said yes to. In the end of the summer I am happy to participate in a group show in Seoul at Doosan gallery curated by Jaemin Shin. Another big thing is that me and my artist/curator friends at Mörby Gård Konst are curating our fifth summer show at Ornö in Stockholm archipelago, each of us have invited one artist and then we let that artist invite another artist. A playful way to broaden our horizons.

Lotta Törnroth solo exhibition Månvarv (curated by Koshik Zaman) opens on May 10, 2025, at Övre Galleriet, Konstnärshuset, Stockholm.

Images:

1. Self-portrait with mirror

2. Self-portrait with mirror

3. Detail view from the studio at IASPIS, 2023, photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

4. Detail view from the studio at IASPIS, 2023, photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

5. Far och jag (part of Månvarv)

6. Solkatt (part of Månvarv)

7. Fullmåne, oktober, Kökar, 2017 (part of Månvarv)

8. Fullmåne, oktober, Kökar, 2022 (part of Månvarv)

9. Spegeln (part of the work Imaginära Öar)

10. Fyren (Nuup Kangerlua), (part of Imaginära öar)

11. Imitha & Atlanten (part of Imaginära Öar)

12. Jag väntar som ett fyrljus (III), (part of the work Att vänta på det oundvikliga: berättelser från havet)