Collected below is an inquisitive collection of photography by Lennart Lundh, which considers the common small details of our everyday lives.
Lennart Lundh’s Bio:
Lennart Lundh (b. Chicago, 1948) is a fine art (2010 to the present) and documentary (1968-2008) photographer, as well as an internationally recognized poet, short-fictionist, and historian. His images have appeared in numerous books, anthologies, journals, and magazines since 1984, while some ten thousand documentary images are now held in private collections and the reference archives at several aviation and transportation museums. Len has also donated works sold in the Rochester, New York, Community Art Center’s “ROCO6x6” fundraiser for the last seven years.
Married since 1968, Lennart and his wife, Lin, live in the Chicago suburb of Orland Hills. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. Lennart served in Vietnam with the Navy’s Amphibious Ready Group Bravo in support of Marine Corps operations during 1968 and 1969; he was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector in 1970.
Professionally, he worked as a Systems Analyst, Project Manager, Systems Consultant, and Retail Manager from 1971 until retiring in 2014. As a returning adult student, he received interdisciplinary degrees in the Social Sciences (BA ’78, MA ’84) from Northeastern Illinois University.
Lennart Lundh’s Artist Statement
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been more interested in details than sweeping vistas. My career choices reflect this, as do the areas in which I write and research. It seems quite natural to me, then, that my eye as a photographer also turns to details, to the things we see but at the same time overlook. At the same time, being deeply introverted, I’m drawn to the neglected and abandoned places that are themselves barely seen details on the larger landscape.
The images here are part of an ongoing series that considers doors, so often used in our daily lives and so quickly forgotten. When taken collectively, they’re commonplace and banal, but the farther we travel from commercialized, large-scale architecture, the less any look cookie-cutter, exactly like another in their details or as a detail of a structure.
Hinges and handles, frames and panels, fill both functional and aesthetic roles, be they part of a pseudo-Art Deco theater entry or the solemnly stern and solid entry to a large church. In a zoo, decorative touches mark an area in the Arctic displays, while simple metal hinges and a solidly assembled door keep the elements out of a residence while ensuring privacy.
The variety is further expanded by colors and maintenance. What looks like a black door from a distance is not black against the painted wall stones into which it’s set. The courtyard door of a restaurant is established and soothing, which the metal serving to cover the entrance to a junkyard is certainly neither.
A business’ uncared for door presents colors from light brown to chalky turquoise, all of them streaked and scrubbed, while the unused side door of a mechanic’s yard is part of a faded still life of rusting metal and painted clay.
And, yes, the same may be said and seen for windows, stairways, balconies, and sections of walls. Those are, however, for another time, perhaps, being parts of other, simultaneous projects that occupy my imagination and eyes.
—Jet Fuel Review–