Gerry Johansson - Paris 1980

In 1980, photographer Ralph Nykvist and I traveled to Paris. We both worked for the magazine Aktuell Fotografi. I did the layout and Ralph was a freelance writer doing photographer presentations, articles and reviews. He also had a monthly column with opinions that could irritate a lot of photographers.

Over the years, Ralph had built up a good European network of contacts and it was probaly his idea that Mois de la Photo was something that should be covered by the magazine. 1980 was the first year of Mois de la Photo and I remember the event as quite modest. We saw a few exhibitions, we saw a film about Cartier Bresson with a funny ending and we met a few photographers. Among others, Esaias Baitel and William Klein.

At that time, I made a lot of landscapes with a Widelux panoramic camera with a rotating lens. It is a true panoramic camera that gives images without a central perspective and it works perfectly well for landscapes and nature images but can usually not be used for architecture photography and cityscapes. They used to be big and clumsy cameras that should be placed on a tripod, but a few models were small and could be used freehand. One such was camera was the Widelux. It used 35 mm film and had a 26 mm fix focus lens set at circa 1,5 m. With the lens stopped down to 11, wich was the smallest apperture, the image was sharp from about 70 cm to infinity. I brought it with me to Paris because I had an idea, that it should be possible to make interesting street phtographs with lots of people interacting, and that the bustling city life would hide the strange perspective.

Signed and numbered.