PATRIK WENNERLUND
When gray becomes color
By: Mats Alfredsson | September, 2022
Think of the worst weather you can imagine.
Rain, wind, hail, storming snow and fog.
Then double it!
Then you have the absolute best weather Patrik Wennerlund can ask for when he challenges nature with his camera.
I meet up with Patrik one morning at a café in his hometown of Borås, Sweden. He’s sipping on a latte and that is how the story begins. When I ask him why he photographs it is like opening a faucet.
– Images and photography are amazing, Patrik exclaims and his whole face lights up. Nothing compares to catching the world in an image. Everything looks different. Accentuated. I reflect my own feeling of the moment.
Patrik has been involved with images for as long as he can remember. In principle he was born into it. It is in his DNA. Already as a four or five year old he worked as a model in mail-order catalogues. His dad worked as an advertising executive and at 14 Patrik had made up his mind. He would also work in advertising.
And so it was! Art Director and Graphic Designer have been the titles on his business cards. Today he can add celebrated nature photographer.
‘The first camera ended up at the bottom of a glacier’
– I got my first camera at 15, but it disappeared in a glacier in the Alps, Patrik exclaims with a laugh. Not a big loss, developing the film was expensive and the roll of film only contained party pictures of me and my mates.
Perhaps that was when he was inspired to experience dramatic nature experiences?
Being in the world of advertising the interest in images grew. Patrik would think of anything and everything with images in mind. He wanted to create his own images and the first step was macro photography.
– Did you know that the world is hairy? It’s really hairy, furry even. This is what I saw through the lens and then there was no turning back. All people saw of me was my ass up in the air, crawling on the ground.
Patrik asked himself, what would I want up on my own wall. He started printing his own images. Large images!
– It was a magic feeling.
