CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/27/2025

“Johanssonian democracy” from a true photographer’s photographer

Featured image is from Gerry Johansson: Maine, releasing this week from The Ice Plant. Collecting 180 duotone reproductions made during the octogenarian Swedish photographer’s 2023 sojourn through the Pine Tree State, it’s entirely what it says it is, nothing more and nothing less. “When you consider Johansson’s photography and bookmaking together, his output is a beacon of consistency,” Blake Andrews writes in Collector Daily. “No cropping, no motion, no color, no artist statement, no design experiments, digital interventions, or frills of any type. Just a series of identically sized straight photographs, channeled into a monograph with encyclopedic detachment. Some might discount his cool Scandinavian style as reserved and predictable. The counter argument is that Johansson communicates in a strong and distinctive voice. His photobooks are identifiable at a glance, and they’ve staked out a photographic style—which might be branded a ‘Johanssonian democracy’—which is his alone.”