The lost boys...A conversation with
BO Hylén
Written By: Baldur Bragason | January, 2023
Photo: Bo Hylén
I sit down at my pool/dinner/work table at my home here in the countryside in Sweden and I reach out through ones and zeros across the sea to Normandy, to another photographer who has become an expatriate in a foreign land. Me an Icelander in Sweden, calling a Swede in France.
And through our long talk we not only find so many similarities with how we moved through our lives although we were born a generation apart but we also found ourselves in the same cities across the ocean at the same time as well as here in Sweden where our daughters were each at the French schools in Stockholm at the same time.
At times it got a bit uncanny, Bo was on his way to move to Santa Barbara when I was there at school, we were in Los Angeles at the same time and later in Stockholm. We spoke for ages before we got around to what the Face Time call was supposed to be about, the interview, but it was already much more of an exchange rather than an assignment, a conversation rather than an interview that would be altogether too long for this format.
Firstly though, you should know a bit about Bo.

He isn’t your average guy with a camera who’s gotten lucky with a couple of images here and there. Nope.
Apart from being able to build himself a good life as a photographer which so very few of us are able to do, he’s one of those that can be creative on demand for top tier clients. Again and again, day after day, 5 or 7 days a week. That is even rarer.
Here are some of those advertising clients…. CBS, NBC, Apple Computer, Alpine Audio, Paramount Studios, Infinity, Acura, Lexus, Maserati, Volvo, Mitsubishi, Citroen, Peugeot, Renault, Nissan, Porsche and pretty much all of the American car brands along with most of the heavy hitters amongst the large advertising agencies.
These are not low maintenance clients or easy to keep happy.