A CHAT WITH JH ENGSTROM

JH Engström, the man behind the placentas at the heart of all this week's todo, is one of the most praised photographers to come out of Sweden since his mentor Anders Petersen passed him the torch from Christer Strömholm. But we're not going to get into all that, because JH has managed to do all of the following stuff all by himself: being featured in all sorts of high-end art and fashion publications, showing his work in galleries worldwide, and publishing numerous collectible books; many dealing with the culture shock he's experienced traveling back and forth between Paris and the Swedish countryside of his native Värmland since he was 10.

Vice: Hi JH, were you ever freaked out by the placentas you shot? When my mother saw your photo in the Still Lifes issue, she told me my dad tried to take a placenta picture when I was born, but fainted before he could go through with it.
JH Engstrom: I have to admit that I almost did too. Especially since it was a caesarean, with lots of complications. But as Susan Sontag said—an important part of photography is taking responsibility for seeing what life truly is. And what can be more so than a photograph of placentas? That's where life begins, that's how it looks. It's easy to look away, but daring to see what things actually look like is taking responsibility. The advertisers whose ad we placed next to your photo totally freaked out.
Really? I don't know, maybe the people who are grossed out by them are just afraid of death. I mean, what can be more beautiful than placentas? They are a condition of life, which I'd say is something positive. Would you say being exposed to placentas and not looking away is a mature way of acknowledging where we came from?
Yes. It's kind of the same moral as I have for eating meat; don't eat it if you can't kill it. Would you kill an animal?
Not voluntarily, but if I had to, sure. But back to the placentas photo--it did give me an answer to a question I had been pondering for a while: Can you hide behind the camera or not? Can you?
No.

Got it.
Of course there are exceptions, like if you're a war photojournalist depicting human slaughter, then you can hide behind your camera. You're not involved, you're just looking at the situation through your lens. Personally, I use the camera as a tool to get closer to existential matters. When my twins were born, I definitely took part in what was going on. It was all very intense and with the camera I was able to perpetuate that moment.

Did you arrange the placentas before taking the photo, or was it a snapshot?
I didn't touch them--the midwives lay them out like that for you. I just took a snap of them. I've heard of people who eat placentas, believing they prevent postpartum depression and increase milk production. It's called placentophagy, and there are recipes and all. Actually, one of our pals did it just for a lark.
A friend of mine brought her placenta home after giving birth and froze it, then cooked it. But we weren't too interested in that, not our bag of tea.

From Trying to Dance. On a more serious note, we should point out that the placenta picture is from your upcoming book, Wells, which will be the last part of your book trilogy (preceded by Trying to Dance and Haunts). What would you say each book is about?
All three books are personal without being directly revealing. Trying to Dance is about secret rooms and innocence, with a lot of nudity—a third of it was self-portraits and the rest were pictures of my friends and surroundings in New York, all within 200 meters from where I lived. Haunts, as the name implies, is about places, people and situations I've felt drawn to for different reasons. From Haunts.

Und Wells?
It's about private rooms and a love story, a pregnancy, and a birth. The fact that the twins are a boy and a girl ties up the book poetically, as it started with the story of a man and a woman.

From Wells. It's a nice continuation. The placentas picture even looks like an infinity symbol.
Yes, it does, doesn't it? Do you shoot a lot of still life?
I do. Every day. I took a photo of my table when I woke up this morning, for instance. What was on it?
Coffee cups, wine glasses, cigarette butts and a cast iron pan. Can I see it?
I only shoot on film and I have 400 undeveloped rolls, so it might take a while. I guess that'll put the pictures into perspective when you finally get to see them.
I definitely discover new things in them that I didn't consider when taking them. Last question: Do you have a favorite picture?
I don't normally have "favorites" but in this case I actually do. It's a sort-of still life by Man Ray. I can't really tell what it represents, but it was taken after WW2 outside of Paris in "The Zone," which was a deserted area. The picture shows a metal furniture carcass that was once a bed, or maybe a couch, amid desolate vegetation. I think there's also a tree in it. For some reason that picture haunts me, it has some kind of absurdity to it that I like.

INTERVIEW BY MILENE LARSSON

Psst: Here are two more of JH's pics we really like: