MAINE [Signed]

192 pages / 170 x 240 mm / Clothbound hardcover
180 duotone images

In 2023, Swedish photographer Gerry Johansson roamed the state of Maine with a Rolleiflex, curious to make new pictures in a region of America he first encountered in the work of Paul Strand five decades ago — he found Strand’s views of New England “boring” at the time — and also wondering, “Why is American photography so focused on the west?” Johansson’s Maine echoes the formal restraint of his earlier books, notably American Winter, Spanish Summer, Meloni Meloni, and Pontiac, sequencing nearly 200 black-and-white duotone photographs alphabetically by their oddly poetic northeastern town names (Bath, Friendship, Purgatory, etc). Somehow, as in all Johansson’s work, none of the Maine pictures draws more attention than any other, and the flawless and playful compositions never seem to repeat — Johansson’s endlessly inventive arrangements of architecture and landscape orient the viewer in a specific geographic and cultural place while generously sharing his way of seeing, ambling, and thinking with a camera.
Gerry Johansson, (b 1945) lives in Höganäs, Sweden. He started photographing in the late 1950s and was a member of the Village Camera Club in New York from 1962-63. Since 1970 he has worked as graphic designer, publisher and photographer. His numerous photobooks include Amerika (Byggförgalet, 1998), Pontiac (Mack, 2011), Antarktis (Libraryman, 2014), American Winter (Mack, 2018), and Meloni Meloni (Self-published, 2020). His work is held in the collection of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where he has had solo exhibitions. He has been awarded the Region Skånes Kulturpris and the Lars Tunbjörk Prize.