Lennart Durehed: The Vicinity is a photo book offering a delicious set of Swedish photographer Lennart Durehed’s photographs of architectural details. Durehed’s photos are characterized by a play of reflections, surfaces, and considered compositions that creates depth and layering in the images — the photos seem to have their own architecture. The work is published by the Swedish Art and Theory.
Time and place have a central significance in Lennart Durehed’s work, manifested in his titles which mostly refer to cities or neighborhoods and years. He often utilizes reflections to great effect, a site’s surroundings mirrored by glossy facades of glass and metal. This creates visual layers and, like a montage, ambivalent spatialities arise. Buildings are seldom depicted in their entirety, but as details and segments that emphasize the picture as a picture. In other words, the composition and the interplay between surface and depth aim to accomplish something more than simple documentation. The choices made by Lennart Durehed when observing his subject on the camera’s focusing screen give the photographs the character of constructions with their own architecture.