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Remembering Lars Tunbjörk: Legendary Color Photographer of the Absurd

6 minute read

“Come closer to the common mystery.
Attend to the ordinary…
It is the wisdom that sees the ordinary with amazement.”
Lao Tzu’s Tao-Te-Ching, c 400BC/f.Kr.
—from Office (Editions Journal, 2002) by Lars Tunbjörk

Lars Tunbjörk, who died on April 8, originated from Boras, Sweden, a place that inspired most of his life’s work and set him on a path to become one of the most influential visionaries in contemporary color photography.

Early in his career Tunbjörk, born in 1956, was inspired by the Swedish masters such as Christer Stromholm. But, he soon discovered his own style by taking a cue from the American photographers of the 1970s like Stephen Shore and William Eggleston. While leaving behind his black and white photography to create his signature ultra-vibrant color documentary work, he produced a record of Swedish society and the ironies of modern life around the world.

His early series Landet Utom Sig (Country Beside Itself) shot in 1993, was an incisive depiction of contemporary European life on holiday and launched his lifelong pursuit of the absurd incongruities of our society’s pursuit of pleasure and later looked at the landscape of the office to document our work/life imbalances.

Tunbjork’s work is best experienced in the photo book format. He used the medium in innovative ways to build loose narratives and to showcase his extraordinary projects. He released more than 10 photobooks, which include Home (Steidl, 2003) and Vinter (Steidl, 2007). With the now rare book Office (Editions Journal, 2002), he came to preeminence, with Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describing him as “an acute observer of modern life”.

His photographs belong to many major collections of museums from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in Stockholm, to the Centre Pompidou and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. He was a member of L’Agence Vu for almost 20 years and worked prolifically as an editorial photographer for The New York Times Magazine, GEO, and many other publications including TIME. He was represented by Paul Amador Gallery in New York.

Tunbjork’s images amplified the most mundane and absurd aspects of modern life in a surreal way, using the hard light of flash photography, which became his signature style and influenced a generation of photographers after him. He never used light for mere effect but crafted it like a master painter to accentuate color and amplify the humdrum details of the everyday. Whatever subject he was documenting, suburbia or offices spaces, he did it in such a revealing way with a stark, clear-eyed honesty layered with an sense of dark humor.

A Stranger in a Strange Land: The Iowa Caucus by Lars Tunbjörk

Young Romney supporters swarm to meet him for autographs at a campaign stop in Clive, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Mitt Romney greets crowds of campaign supporters at Competitive Edge in Clive, Iowa the day before the caucus on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Dan Lindsay and his 10-year-old son Tyler at a Romney event at the Hy-Vee parking lot in West Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011. Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Mitt Romney supporters Marcella Yochum and her son Scott Yochum gather at a campaign event in West Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
John Strong, a U.S. veteran and Mitt Romney supporter, holds an anti-Obama sign at a campaign event at the Hy-Vee in West Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011. Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Mitt Romney poses for photos with a young supporter at a campaign event at the Hy-Vee parking lot in West Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Mitt Romney supporters break down the set after a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
The remains of a Romney event in Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Romney meets with voters to discuss jobs and the economy at the Family Table Restaurant in Atlantic, Iowa on January 1, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Mitt Romney supporter Becky Nicoli at a campaign event at Hy-Vee supermarket in Des Moines, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
A winter landscape outside of Boone, Iowa on December 31, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Rick Santorum prays before a meal of nachos at the Okoboji Grill while he campaigns in Johnston, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Rick Santorum tries on a sweater vest while campaigning at Buffalo Wild Wings in Ames, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
A woman watches Rick Santorum on a closed curcuit TV during a campaign event at Legends American Grill in Marshalltown, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
The press questions Rick Santorum as he campaigns at Buffalo Wild Wings in Ames, Iowa on December 30, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Rick Santorum at the Smokey Row Coffeehouse for a meet and greet in Oskaloosa, Iowa on December 31, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
A flag flies over the landscape of Walford, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Mitt Romney and his wife Ann host a a grassroots campaign rally at Bayliss Park Hall in Council Bluffs, Iowa on January 1, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
A Ron Paul supporter jumps up and down to keep warm and attract attendees to a campaign event in Cedar Falls, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Ron Paul waits to speak at a campaign event in Cedar Falls, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Rand Paul (center) listens to his father Ron Paul at a campaign event in Cedar Falls, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
People begin to gather for a Town Hall Meeting with Newt Gingrich at a campaign stop in Walford, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Ellis the Elephant and Newt Gingrich campaign in Walford, Iowa on January 2, 2012.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
William Temple, a Revolutionary War reenactor, who has become an unofficial tea party mascot, greets Michele Bachmann at a campaign stop called 'Rock the Caucus,' at Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa on January 3, 2012. Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Rick Perry campaigns at The Gigglin' Goat in Boone, IA on December 31, 2011.Lars Tunbjörk for TIME
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann are greeted with a gift from a supporter at his Iowa Caucus night rally in Des Moines, Iowa, January 3, 2012. Lars Tunbjörk for TIME

Tunbjork also used photography to speak about the dark parts of his own life and how he saw the world. Specifically in Vinter, he photographed his own struggle out of the hollow depths of a depression he suffered after a heart attack. In the book, he paints a picture of his hometown and its inhabitants, and turns inward to reveals his own scars in a self-portrait of his chest stitched closed after surgery. Through his images, he builds a loose narrative out of the darkest season of the year and perhaps one of the darkest parts of his life to find some kind of reckoning with a place. In the book’s accompanying essay, curator Anna Tellgren says, “his photographs serve as testimonies to the state of things, but without any claims of delivering the whole truth.”

Working with Lars was a gentle experience. He was always soft spoken and patient. Lars didn’t need dramatic locations or action packed situations to make photos. He just needed to see life unfolding in the most ordinary way and, in that, he had the uncanny ability to articulate and reveal the beautiful and conflicted world he saw through his camera.

One time, I was asked by our editor to try to reinvent our approach to campaign photography during the 2008 elections and I asked Lars if he was up for the challenge. In his most humble and modest way, he accepted and went to Iowa by himself for two weeks to cover the caucus in the cold and lonely Midwest. To capture our democratic process in action each day he drove for hours and hardly slept, barely said much and never complained about the insanity of the ever-changing campaign schedule. Each night, he filed extraordinary photographs of some of the hardest people to shoot—politicians.

Watch a short video produced by Agence VU and Femis, and directed by Pierre Maïllis Laval

I’ll always be grateful for his dedication. I’ll always remember the photos he made of Rick Santorum at a Buffalo Wild Wings. That day, Dec. 30, 2011, which Lars spent driving for hours to follow the various candidates, Lars lingered after the event had ended and all the press had left. Santorum, surrounded by his staffers, stayed for dinner and Lars was able to photograph him praying over a mountain of Nachos. The resulting photography perfectly deconstructed all the artifice and craft of the political theatre and showed something real about the candidate. This was Lars’ approach — subtle and without judgment.

I remember asking him to keep an eye out for signs of the campaign in the Iowa landscape, and he sent me back a photograph of a totally empty frost covered barren field. He said, “that’s what Iowa looks like right now”. It was a beautiful and sad picture, carefully crafted as only he knew how. Lars made you feel like you weren’t alone and that someone else understood the great abyss that stands before us.

He will be greatly missed by many of us.

Lars Tunbjörk is survived by his wife and his two daughters.

Paul Moakley is TIME’s Deputy Director of Photography and Visual Enterprise. Follow him on Twitter @paulmoakley.

Myles Little is an associate photo editor at TIME.

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Sweden, Oland, 1991. From the series "Landet Utom Sig".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, Boras, 1998. From the series "Home".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, 2001. From the series "Home".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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USA, 1995. Big boys will be cowboys.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, 2001 From the series "Home".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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USA, New York, 1996. West 42nd street near 8th avenue. Many of the places in the street were closed before the big renovation and rebuilding of the street.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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USA, New York, 1997. Office, software company.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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USA, New York, 1997. Office, firm of accountants.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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USA, New York, 1997. Office, lawyer's office.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Japan, Tokyo, 1996. Office, civic administration.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Japan, Tokyo, 1996. Office, Bank Japon.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, Stockholm, 1998. Office, stockbroker.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, Kiruna, 2004. From the series "Vinter".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, Sundsvall, 2007. From the series "Vinter".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, Goteborg, 2004. From the series "Vinter".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, Stockholm, 2006. From the series "Vinter".Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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United Arab States, Dubai, March 2008. A sport mecca. Alpine charm at Ski Dubai, mere steps away from the food court.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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Sweden, 2008. Per Segerback, one of the figures of the "electrosensitives" struggle, used to work for the phone company Ericsson. He doesn't move around anymore without his waves protection suit.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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England, Kyloe, 2010 Church House. Ian Bottomley and his partner, Sally Onions, take in the sun in the graveyard of their home, a converted 1792 church.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU
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USA, Minneapolis, 14 November 2012. Roughly a third of cremated human remains get scattered, a third get buried and a third get stored in urn niches such as these at Lakewood Cemetery.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU for TIME
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USA, Iowa, Boone, 31 December 2011 Rick Perry's campaign. A winter landscape outside of the city.Lars Tunbjörk—Agence VU for TIME

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