Inside Out

Martin Bogren (born 1967) is a Swedish photographer whose work takes shape through an intimate and deeply subjective relationship with photography. His research does not stem from an urgency to describe the world, but from the need to move through it, to remain present within situations and let images emerge as traces of lived experience. In his work, photography becomes a space of listening, a suspended time in which observation, intuition, and fragility coexist.

Over the years, Bogren has built a coherent authorial path, made up of projects developed slowly, often over long periods of time. His images do not seek the event, but what remains at the margins: minimal gestures, silences, atmospheres, subtle relationships between people and places. This approach is reflected in his monographs, including Tractor Boys (2013), Italia (2016), August Song (2019), Passenger (2021), and Metropolia (2022) — books that recount not only what is photographed, but above all the way in which the gaze is built over time.

His work has been exhibited and recognized internationally and is now held in major public collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Oregon Fine Art Museum, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Since 2013 he has been a member of Galerie VU’ in Paris, and since 2018, of the Temps Zero collective — contexts that reflect a vision of photography as a conscious and rigorous authorial practice.

Alongside his artistic work, Martin Bogren has long carried out an intense teaching activity. In his workshops, he does not pass on formulas or styles, but guides participants through a process of research, helping them question their own way of working, their relationship with time, with editing, and with their own intentions. In his teaching, photography is an ongoing process of building authorship: a practice born from experience, clarified through dialogue, and one that takes shape only when one accepts to go beyond the surface of images.