8. Emanuel Cederqvist: The Margin of Error

Peter speaks to the Swedish Gothenburg-based photographer Emanuel Cederqvist about his book The Margin of Error. Born in Stockholm in 1863, Axel Hamberg is remembered today as a geographer, a scientist and a cartographer. What is perhaps lesser known about this man is his talent as a photographer. At the beginning of the 20th century, Hamberg began journeying to the glaciated highlands of the Scandinavian Mountains to conduct a number of geological surveys in the region of Sarek. These studies were carried out over a period of several decades, and in 1922, Hamberg’s photographs from these expeditions were published by the Swedish Tourist Association in his book named The Mountains of Sarek. Almost a century later, Emanuel Cederqvist would happen upon the weather station built by Hamberg at Pårtetjåkkå during a hike through Sarek National Park with his father in 2013. Over a subsequent period of six years the Gothenburg-based photographer returned to this region of the Swedish Arctic to continue a dialogue with the history of Axel Hamberg. The photographs from these explorations were eventually printed alongside Hamberg’s archive images in Cederqvist’s own book The Margin of Error, self-published in 2019 via the artist book collective Blackbook Publications. The Margin of Error is an important and valuable work exploring the convergence between two distinct historical perspectives within the same space. Its pages invite many deep and complex questions, not only about the ways by which we come to perceive and understand landscapes, but about the essence of the documentary medium itself.https://emanuelcederqvist.se/Join the conversation on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelandbehind