Karl Lärka
Karl Lärka (born 24 July 1892 at Sollerön in Dalarna, Sweden, died 2 June 1981) was one of the more important 20th-century documentary photographers in Sweden.[1] Lärka's prime concern was to document the peasant culture that he understood was beginning to disappear, the culture of the lands around lake Siljan in Dalarna, one with agriculture, forestry and many people with stories about older times. Most of his photography was done from 1916 to 1934, and he combined it with lecture tours about the countryside of Siljan. He also documented many of the stories elderly people in the villages told him and was very active in the Swedish movement for preserving rural cultures, a movement that started in the 1920, the local history movement, sv. hembygsrörelsen.[vague] More than 4,200 of his photographic plates are today in the municipal archive of Mora.
Karl Lärka as photographer
Karl Lärka's photographs are characterized by his concern to document a disappearing culture. People, animals and buildings are portrayed in their own coherence.[vague] The people cultivate the land, work in the forest, build houses, wash clothes, cook or pose with working horses. He describes weddings, people, interiors, transhumance and village streets with a great sense of feeling for composition and quality.
Many of Lärka's portraits are typically documentary. People are portrayed in their daily chores, often in positions and with attributes they choose themselves.[2] They differ significantly from the studio portraits of that time, in which people often dressed up and posed. With his connection to the Swedish labour movement, Lärka was known as a "democratic photographer".[3] He let people decide themselves how they wanted to stand, if they should smile or not and what clothes they should wear. The documentary work procedure of Lärka is also shown in his recording of older people's stories, a method he combined with his photography.[4]
During his photographic career, Lärka experienced great developments in photographic technique. In the early days of the 20th century he used photographic plates. He got his first box camera during his time at a folk high school. Later he changed to a larger-format American camera that he bought from a retailer who had bought it for photographing thieves in his shop at Sollerön.[5] Lärk experimented with mixtures of magnesium and potassium permanganate for flashlight[6] and did "reverted" enlargements before enlargers arrived, by illuminating photographic paper through the camera lens.
Later, when he got access to an enlarger, Lärka copied his pictures onto fine grained film to be able to show his pictures in his skioptikon (a early form of slide projector) at his lectures.[7]
The large plates were heavy and when they were exposed, Lärka was forced to find a dark space and reload. When the first photographic sheet film arrived, his work was made easier and there was no longer any risk the light would disappear while reloading, which sometimes had happened before.[6]
The cameras he used were an American large format camera, made for 13×18 inch (33×46 centimetre) plates, equipped with separate shutter (Thornton-Pickard Snap-Shot, 1–1/80 sec), Aplanat B no 4 lens from E Suter (Basel) and separate hole blender (1:4 or 1:8).[8]
He also used three smaller folding cameras for the format 10×15 cm. In later life, when he no longer photographed professionally, he got a modern camera for 135 film and took both color photos and black-and-white photos.[9]
Childhood and youth
Karl Lärka was born in 1892 in the village of Gruddbo at Sollerön in Dalarna, Sweden. When he was thirteen he was taught by Uno Stadius, who had a folk high school at Sollerön and told Lärka the importance of documenting everything he observed regarding culture and history.[10] The Lärka family had economic troubles which led to the suicide of Jöns Lärka, Karl's father, in 1906. This struck Karl Lärka particularly hard since he had to help support the family by forestry and farm work.[11] Thus it was only after his military service that Lärka had a chance to think about his own future. He dreamt of becoming a builder and was a capable draughtsman, but there was no money for any higher education. Instead he started his education at the Bachmans school for handicraft in Hedemora. There he got to know the district court judge Lars Trotzig, who understood Lärka's talent and tried to help him get a scholarship for an education in civil engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.[12]
Thanks to his contacts with Trotzig and later on Anders Zorn, Lärka got the opportunity to work with some building restoration projects. He documented many of them, among them the restoration of Zorns Gammelgård. He never got the chance to become a builder, as Trotzig never succeeded in getting him a scholarship. Instead, he took winter courses at the folk high school of Brunnsvik in 1915-1917 and became good friends with his classmate Dan Andersson.[13]
Inspired by another classmate, Johan Öhman, Lärka started, together with Öhman and initially with his camera, photographing the peasant culture at Sollerön. By charging his classmates for portraits, Lärka could buy his first camera of his own, a simple Agfa.
Photography projects
After his education at Brunnsvik, Lärka started working on commission as a documentary photographer. In 1919 he was engaged by the local history association of Dalarna to document people in the village of Finngruvan in Venjan, Dalarna. The project was part of a racial study of a kind then regarded as scientific. Little is known about Lärka's own opinions about such studies. It is known that he wasn´t that interested in the categorizing of the people of Dalarna in different groups according to their skulls, but preferred to listen to the stories of the old men.[14] He was known for having no respect for representatives of the authorities,[2][15] and took a well-known photograph of Dan Andersson while Andersson was making a fool of the Stockholm ethnologists in the project.[14]
References
- ^ According to the Swedish magazine Tidningen Foto, which in 2000 appointed him one of the premier photographer of the former century.
- ^ a b Wirtén, Per, in Romson, p. VIII
- ^ Wirtén, Per, in Romson, p. IX
- ^ Wirtén, Per, in Romson, p. VII–VIII
- ^ Wirtén, Per, in Romson, p. I
- ^ a b Sandström, p. 75
- ^ Sandström, p. 79
- ^ Sandström, p. 27
- ^ Sandström, p. 77
- ^ Sandström, p. 40–41
- ^ Johansson, p. 14
- ^ Sandström, p. 42
- ^ Sandström, p. 61
- ^ a b Wirtén, Per, in Romson, p. III[vague]
- ^ Johansson, p. 22
Literature and references
- Johansson, Sune & Lärka, Karl (1974) Karl Lärkas Dalarna, LTs Förlag, Borås, ISBN 91-36-00361-1
- Romson, Anna (2004) Kråk Ulof i Bäck å ann rikti folk. Fotografier av Karl Lärka 1916–1934., with a foreword by Per Wirtén, Modernista, Göteborgstryckeriet, ISBN 91-88748-72-3
- Sandström, Birgitta (2001) Karl Lärka - odalman, fotograf, hembygdsvårdare, Zornsamlingarna, Västervik, ISBN 91-972519-9-2