Photographs by Gerry Johansson
Text by Marie Lundquist
Design by Henrik Nygren, Greger Ulf Nilson
Gun Gallery, 2011
Edition of 500 copies, signed in pencil on cover
Hardcover
54 pp., 24 black & white illustrations
175 x 245 mm
ISBN 978-91-977658-9-3
A collection of Christmas Cards sent to family and friends from 1978 to 2011. All the pictures are made in he photographer's small home town, Höganäs, in Southern Sweden. Foggy evenings enlightened by the annual Christmas Spirit.
In Sweden, some forty million Christmas cards are sent each year. In addition to the text, the image on the card is the message. The Post Office Museum divides the themes into five categories: Landscapes and birds, musicians, elves, angels of all ages and kind children.
Gerry Johansson’s Christmas cards can’t be arranged according to the Post Office Museum’s categories. It may be asked if the Scanian winter even qualifies as anything we think of as the Christmas Spirit. It is ubiqitously grey. Disparate lights shine through the fog like will-o’-the-wisps. Could an elf really use them to navigate? In conjunction with distance-depicting images such as these, the words HAPPY CHRISTMAS are given a diferente tone. The sender really means them. No glitzy bookmark illusions are conveyed here. This is what reality looks like. It demands a slow contemplation in which all of our glittering notions are brought down. Reality is beautiful, even in its complete greyness.” Marie Lundquist