Lennart Kaltea – Reminiscences

Lennart Kaltea has been part of Swedish photography for decades, developing a way of working that is unmistakably his own.

His photographs are carefully staged. Kaltea builds the scenes by hand in his studio, working with everything from drawings and objects to sculpted forms. When everything is in place, he photographs the finished scene with a large-format camera.

It is a process he has stuck with even as photography around him has changed dramatically.

Per Broman, CEO of House of Photography, has followed Kaltea’s work for years:

Lennart is a really good Swedish photographer who deserves more attention. What I love about his pictures is that they don’t look like much else. They’re strange, precise and sometimes funny. And when you understand how he actually makes them, they become even better, says Per Broman.

That process is surprisingly hands-on. Kaltea has previously described working in a studio of just 17 square metres, building everything that appears in his photographs himself. No digital construction afterwards. What you see in the photograph was there when he pressed the shutter.