Sune Jonsson: The Village with the Blue House/Images of the Children of Grace/Monograph

Book info: Sune Jonsson: The Village with the Blue House/Images of the Children of Grace/Monograph (Hardcover, 630 pages) – Steidl/GUN, 2009. Language: English.

Often compared to Walker Evans and August Sander, Sune Jonsson is Sweden's preeminent documentary photographer. For more than half a century, with the sharp eye of an anthropologist, he has captured the drama of societies facing the effects of modernization with a unique blend of classical photography and evocative writing. Particularly concerned with the disappearance of rural ways of life, he has focused on agriculture in order to provide a definitive look at the changes industrialization has wrought on the cultivated landscape. In addition to documenting V sterbotten, the city where he has long lived and worked, over the years his vernacular photography has also captured New York, Congo and Prague. This slipcased, clothbound, three-volume set with tipped-on interior images contains an essential retrospective look at the artist's work, as well as reprints of two of Jonsson's most important books: The Village with the Blue House, his first monograph, published in 1959; and Images of the Children of Grace from 1963. Jonsson is the author of more than 20 monographs, as well as numerous short stories, novels and documentary films.