Aided and abetted by good fortune, over the last month and a bit I’ve enjoyed what were essentially holidays in Sweden and New York. My partner and I spent a couple of weeks in Sweden at the end of June and the beginning of July: we visited family in and around Skellefteå over midsummer, which I posted about briefly mid-trip; wandered the extent of Umeå, our old home, where we lived together for approaching four years; and spent also a couple of days in Stockholm. Towards the end of July, we spent a week in New York City. It was the first time either of us had visited, and we loved our time there. We stayed in Park Slope, Brooklyn, renting an apartment via Airbnb, which worked excellently; and though we spent more days than not in Manhattan, we did a great deal of walking, blistered all of our feet, and managed to see a little of four of the city’s five boroughs.
This wealth of travelling has seen a dearth of posts here, at culturedallroundman.com. I managed only one through the course of last month – an addition to my series of pieces on Vincent van Gogh – and despite its length, its scope, and its exceptional quality, I remain mildly repentant. Still, the two trips have given me a lot to think about, to show, and to write about, and a range of posts will appear here over the next few weeks containing photographs, depictions of interactions and of food, and considering the exhibitions of several of the museums I explored.
This post is a photographic summation, via Instagram, of the visit to Sweden. The first photograph views Landsförsamling church in Skellefteå from a distance; the second the lake in Järvträsk, Norrbotten. Then there comes Umeå’s Art Campus, and the Bildmuseet, part of an exhibition therein by Jacob Hashimoto, and the Ume river. We sit separately in front of our computers and together we see: Umeå Central Station; the University’s Lindellhallen; IKSU sports centre; and the area of Nydala around the Kinabron and Nydalasjön, including a photograph of me, from behind, daringly bounding from one rock face to another.
There is a view of Renmarkstorget in evocative black-and-white, a perspective on the Rådhus, and a photo looking over the Ume river, across the city’s several bridges. Onto Stockholm, appearing in turn are: the House of Knights; Storkyrkan and Storkyrkobrinken on Gamla stan; several cityscapes around Skeppsbron and Strömbron, including one of the Swedish Parliament; a photograph inside the Nationalmuseum at Konstakademien; and finally one from Strandvägen towards the island of Skeppsholmen. There are twenty-four photographs in all.
