PER-OLOW ANDERSON (1921-1989): “Kungholms strand 159", Stocholm, circa 1953, archival pigment print.

Blade dimensions approx. 54x28 cm

Numbered 7/10, stamp signed verso with the photographer's copy right stamp,
archival pigment print.

HISTORIAN:
Per-Olow Anderson was a Swedish photographer who is now almost forgotten. He was in his day known throughout much of the world, but less so in his homeland. Perhaps because it was the world that was his field of work, while the homeland mostly served as a place for short visits between photo assignments.
P-O, as he was called in the closest circle, was born in 1921 in Stockholm. The story of his life is so rich that it is barely comprehensible. As a sixteen-year-old, he went to Spain to document the civil war there. A few years later he went with some of the Swedish Spanienvolunteers to Norway to participate in the Norwegian resistance movement. He was arrested by the Germans and held in Grini before being transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. There he spent half a year before being released in a prisoner exchange.
While in Norway, he had made contact with the British Air Force, which employed him as a photographer and trained him to be a pilot. During a flying mission, his plane was hit and P-O ended up badly injured in hospital in England. That was the end of his flying career.
But P-O continued his travels to the various war heartlands of the world. He participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and three years later he participated in the Normandy landings in 1944. There he again met Robert Capa whom he had come to know during the Spanish Civil War. When Capa was killed by a mine in Indochina in 1954, P-O was by his side.
In the 1950s P-O began working in the Middle East, especially in Egypt. He became close friends with Nasser and also came into contact with the Palestinian freedom struggle after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. In 1956, he was in Gaza documenting the miserable existence of refugees there. It resulted in the photo book “They are human too.“which was published in the United States in 1957. In Egypt, he also followed the construction of the giant Assuand Dam and the relocation of the Abu Simbel temple during the mid-60s.
But P-O also had other strings on his lyre. During the 50s and 60s, he worked as a photographer for film companies such as United Artists, Paramount Pictures and Sandrews. He documented the filming of numerous blockbusters, such as War and Peace, Alexander the Great and The Folly of Summer. In his image treasure, there are unique images of actors such as Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sophia Loren, Humphrey Bogart and others.
Among the Swedish films he followed the shooting of are Käre John, Black Palm Crowns, The Bookseller Who Stopped Bathing and The Minister.
But the story of P-O Anderson's incredible life also includes a host of other elements such as his passion for sports cars and hot air balloons.
P-O died in 1989, and his extensive collection of images is preserved. A fantastic cultural and period document that deserves a better fate than that of oblivion.