Childhoods

The most important thing for photographer and field ethnologist Sune Jonsson was his encounters with people, especially those in the counties of Västerbotten and Ångermanland, his home area. With his contemplative photographs, he has depicted eras and places that have now disappeared in different senses, and lives that seem to move in a cyclic rather than a linear fashion.

The children and youngsters in his photographs also seem to be enclosed in the cycle of the seasons. The little ones, busy with their everyday chores, extensive personal responsibilities, and at the same time engrossed in simply being a child. Youngsters in an era when the term “youth” was still fairly new, when the characteristics and habits of adult life were acquired at an early age.

In Sune Jonsson’s photographs, there is more sadness about the permanence than a determined path away across the fields, even if that was precisely what lay ahead for most of the people who lived their childhoods in his photographs.