Jens Assur, Private nature

In Private Nature, Jens Assur explores what happens to us when we spend time in nature and which traces we leave behind. It is about the grandiosity of nature and our own smallness, our abilities and our shortcomings

One of Sweden's foremost photographers and filmmakers, Jens Assur's work gives rise to social debate and commitment. In Private Nature, the focus is on himself and his family in the search for an answer to the great existential question: How does nature challenge us and how it, in turn, is being challenged from different quarters.

What happens to us when we live far away from nature, and when we return to it? In addition to exploring profound existential questions, the exhibition also raises burning contemporary issues about privatisation, the right to roam and exploitation in the wake of wilderness tourism.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the book Privat natur will be published by Norstedts in collaboration with Liljevalchs. Comprising some 220 images selected and taken by Jens Assur during a seven-year long project, the book also contains essays by writers who tackle the subject.

Jens Assur came to prominence in the 1990s as a reporter and photographer at the daily newspaper Expressen, and has since held a number of acclaimed exhibitions, including Under the Shifting Skies (2001), Hunger (2010) and Africa is a Great Country (2013) as well as producing several books and films. The starting point for his project is typically a current societal problem. Born in 1970 in the village of Stora Blåsjön, Jens Assur currently lives in Duved in northwest Jämtland.