Jens Olof Lasthein

His widely exhibited work principally covers scenes before and after the wars in former Yugoslavia and other borderlands across Europe, for instance the area around the old Iron Curtain.

He worked in a shipyard and as a bus driver before studying photography at Nordens Fotoskola (the Nordic Photo School) in Stockholm (1989–1992).

[2] Lasthein explains that his interest in eastern Europe began when he spent a week in Moscow in 1982 followed by two months hitchhiking in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1984.

[3] In Lasthein's own words: Basically the idea is to take the viewer on a visual journey through the borderland between European East and West.

But they are not just about people (or animals); they also show the surrounding environment with empty waiting rooms, overgrown road signs or geese marching towards a cathedral.

Lasthein also has an ability to make use of the warm afternoon light to create an overwhelming sense of space, extending far beyond the narrow pages of the book.