Mikael Jansson - Speed of Life

Life-embracing and death-defying

What’s the allure of such an extreme, extravagant sport? It is no doubt something you feel deep in your bowels, an echo of the heightened sense of being alive that must engorge your body in a car, in front of an audience, racing along at an unimaginable 300 km/h. Mikael Jansson let his curiosity get the better of him, becoming the first photographer truly to get to the beating heart of this fabled culture. Through his eyes, we experience it, too. Enigmatic images of chrome, drivers, dust. The men and the fans. It’s so much more than just a motor sport. These photos, some in a monumental 260 x 390 cm format, raise existential issues, questions about the human drive to push back boundaries and challenge the laws of nature, and our longing for a higher spiritual dimension.

With clients like Calvin Klein, Armani and Christian Dior, Vogue Paris, W Magazine and Interview, for whom he often shoots portraits of influential personalities, Mikael Jansson is counted one of the world’s leading photographers. He has published several books, exhibited at galleries and museums around the world, and won several prestigious awards.

Ten years after it premiered with a major exhibition at Kulturhuset, CFHILL is proud to once again present Speed of Life. Special thanks to Daniel Boyacioglu for the poem he wrote for the occasion.

Michael Elmenbeck
Michael Storåkers
Anna-Karin Pusic