Ragnar Persson
Turnaround/Dokument You may remember Ragnar Persson from the scary taxidermy wolf he shot for our 2007 Photo Issue Cover. And if you saw his pretty pencil drawings of girls and Nordic woods in the No Photo Issue later that year, you’ll know that he is no slouch with a pencil either. Growing up in Tavelsjö, a tiny village in northern Sweden, there wasn’t much to do besides walk in the woods and go fishing, so Ragnar drew a lot as a kid. Later, in art school, he decided he wasn’t good at painting and photography so he took up drawing again, mainly because his teachers said it wasn’t art. He liked the fact that there are no rules in drawing. If you mess up you can just erase or cut out the good bits, or if it’s too pretty or too lame, you can drop a big ink splotch on it or cross it out. But no matter what he does, his drawings are always gorgeous. His obsession with certain things is reflected in his work. Lately he’s been into drawing horses and Black Sabbath logos after listening to Born Again, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Black Sabbath on repeat for an improbable amount of time. According to Ragnar, “There can never be too much Black Sabbath!” The drawings you see on these pages are from his upcoming book Feel the Darkness that will be out at the end of March.
ragnarpersson.com