Mikael Jansson at CFHILL

“I love meeting people and I love the portrait form. I have photographed famous people and model icons for over thirty years and now that the world has "shut down" I wanted to look beyond the borders and reflect on those years."

— Mikael Jansson

Every art form engages with the aesthetic elements of composition, palette, light and shadow, but the art of portrait photography relies on something intangible beyond these surface considerations: the personal connection between the photographer and sitter. The act of making a portrait is a duet, an improvised dance. Even shoots that entail months of planning ultimately depend on a brief moment of magic. Over the past four decades Mikael Jansson has created portraits of a galaxy of stars from the worlds of film, theatre, music and fashion, and for his third exhibition at CFHill he has selected 32 of his most iconic pictures from a portfolio of thousands. While the previous exhibitions focussed on specific projects – Speed of Life (2017) documented the thrilling Formula 1 circuit and Daria, The Archipelago Series (2018) celebrated the simple pleasures of the archipelago – this new show reveals the immense breadth of Jansson’s talent with a choice of pictures ranging from vibrant contemporary colour studies to classic black and white prints. 

Photographs from glamorous shoots on location in Paris, LA and Mauritius are displayed alongside intimate studio portraits. We encounter A-list performers including Penelope Cruz and Rhianna dripping in jewels and freshly made-up, ready to face their fans. In contrast, icons such as Isabella Rossellini and Charlotte Gainsbourg are seen in a stark, stripped-back aesthetic. Wearing a plain black outfit, Rossellini looks directly into the camera captivating us with her confidence and raw beauty. The half-dressed Gainsbourg looks away with one hand pressed against her temple, lips slightly parted, lost in a private moment of reverie and oblivious to the camera’s presence. 

Humanity, not fashion, motivates Jansson, and these beguiling pictures reveal his deep fascination for people. In addition to images of still contemplation, there are moments of dynamism and Jansson shares with his mentor Richard Avedon a talent for capturing movement in still pictures. In the Miami studio the Godfather of Punk Iggy Pop dances with characteristic vigour; in New York 16 Alexander Wang models jostle for space within the picture frame, a mass of long limbs, tousled tresses and youthful energy. Outside the confines of the studio Anja Rubik runs through a field of flowers, dark hair swirling as the shimmering fabric of her Dior dress billows and flows like liquid silver in the twilight. This shot is from a larger series first published in Vogue. Removed from its original context, the image becomes more open to interpretation.

By presenting it in a new realm beyond the magazine page, Jansson gives us the freedom to project our own narrative onto this fairytale picture. 

Artists carry in their minds a pictorial library of the work of their forebears, an immense encyclopaedia of images which they can conjure up at any time. Jansson frequently makes subtle references to the work of his heroes: pioneering Europeans such as Jacques Henri Lartigue, Brassaï, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as the American masters Edward Weston, Paul Strand and Irving Penn. Jansson’s 1994 portrait of Tatjana Patitz is particularly reminiscent of closely-cropped studies by Weston and Strand. Patitz could be described as the female equivalent of Strand’s Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France of 1951: the subjects share a similar piercing gaze, delicate bone structure, smooth tanned complexion and leonine hair. Jansson captures each soft curl of the white sheepskin collar, just as Strand rendered visible every stitch in the boy’s knitted woollen vest.

Several of the characters that Jansson creates are less innocent and more predatory, film noir femmes fatales. In Freja a la Louvre we see a woman and a panther – a witch and her black cat – stalking the moon-lit Paris streets together, sleek and prowling. Both Freja and Malgosia Bela, Paris call to mind the towering dominatrix figures central to Helmut Newton’s oeuvre. The beachwear shoot, Olympic, which juxtaposes geometric architectural forms with toned bodies could be seen as a nod to Newton or to the grandly named Baron George Hoyningen-Huene. The figures in Jansson’s group, along with those from Venice Beach, appear like classical sculptures – gods hewn from the finest marble, every muscle and sinew proudly defined. As the sculptor used a chisel, so Jansson carves his figures using light.  

From the nine muses of Greek mythology to Pablo Picasso’s Dora Maar or Andy Warhol’s Edie Sedgewick, the muse is central to artistic practice. Jansson frequently collaborates with the same models, who might similarly be defined as muses. Sometimes they take on the guise of former famous beauties: the chameleon Kate Moss is convincing as both Marilyn Monroe and Anita Pallenberg. In a polka-dot dress she looks longingly into the camera, enveloped by a sensual haze and diaphanous fabric that instantly evokes the mood of late Marilyn portraits.

Katy Perry, flanked by off-duty dancers in sequins, appears in pictorialist soft focus like a star of 1920s cabaret. By playing with the past and the present in this way Jansson is able to create pictures that transcend fashion and time. It is a style entirely his own. Elsewhere, we encounter well-known figures as they want to be perceived, and firmly rooted in the present moment. Wiz Khalifa is the archetypal cool rapper, heavily tattooed and wearing a gleaming diamond earring and sunglasses he defiantly blows smoke into the air. Gary Oldman is the elder stateman of his craft denoted by his serious gaze, contained pose and impeccable pin-stripe suit. 

Jansson is a rarity among today’s photographers, being as comfortable working with cutting-edge digital technologies as he is making prints by hand in the quiet of the darkroom. A virtuosic printer, he was tasked with printing Avedon’s influential exhibition In the American West for theAmon Carter Museum in 1985 and built his own darkroom a year later. A space for deep concentration, the darkroom is a small sanctuary where the magical alchemy of the printing process takes place. Until recently, Jansson was even creating his own platinum palladium prints, a highly complex process first patented in 1873 that uses elements more precious than gold. To produce a platinum palladium print, a large-scale negative is printed directly in contact with the surface of the photographic paper and the resulting image displays beautifully nuanced grey tones, richer and more varied than those typically seen in other black and white prints. This is the first time in more than 25 years that Jansson has exhibited his platinum palladium prints, the last occasion being an exhibition at Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art. 

 As traditional photographic papers and chemicals become scarcer, the work becomes all the more difficult, but Jansson is committed to the craft of printing and his results speak volumes. Beyond the prints themselves, he carefully tailors the choice of frame to each individual picture. Just as an elegant hat or a chic pair of shoes completes an outfit, the perfect frame completes a beautiful photograph. From start to finish, Jansson’s process is akin to the creation of a couture garment: superlative attention to detail, artistry and commitment are paramount at every stage of the process. There are no shortcuts to perfection.