Majorna

The photographic series Majorna (2006) was photographed on medium-format colour film on location in the city of Göteborg, Sweden, where I lived with my mother during my formative years. The work set out to explore gaps between photographs and subjective memories through the form of a practical thought experiment: if I am unable to mnemically connect with the photographs in my family album, what would happen if I travelled back to this neighbourhood (for the first time since my early teens) and photographed it?

Majorna is a neighbourhood in the harbour city of Göteborg on Sweden’s west coast, which used to be inhabited by harbour workers and shipbuilders from the 16th century onwards, and the name may refer to an old term meaning the Cabins or the Huts.
This is the geographic area in which I (via the interaction with others) learned about important elements such as independence and the social hierarchies that children form, about friendship and betrayal, love and heartache, about violence and death.
Majorna was an important component in my developmental years, yet there are very few photographs taken during my childhood that feature the area. Many parts of Majorna had changed since the 1980s and early 1990s, so my walk through Majorna became an event in itself: an event through which memories emerged.