Breaking Into Print

When you shoot for stock agencies, you never know where your images are going to turn up. A friend of mine contacted me a few days ago, saying that one of my photos just appeared in Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s leading daily newspaper. It was a rather unremarkable red carpet photo of actress Jennifer Lawrence that I had taken some months ago.

What was poignant about this particular photo credit was that Dagens Nyheter is where I first broke into print. I was a teenager living in Stockholm in the 1980s. The newspaper ran a short commentary of mine about a city landmark — Kulturhuset — that I happened to love. To say that I was happy to see my name in print would be an understatement — it was one of the biggest thrills of my life.

As a kid, one of my mother’s friends, a reporter at Dagens Nyheter, had given me a personal tour of the newsroom. The experience set its mark on my young and impressionable psyche and nurtured my passion to become a journalist.

That was more than thirty years ago. I don’t feel that same rush of excitement when I see my name in print anymore. But for whatever reason, getting published in Dagens Nyheter still feels special. Like returning to an alma mater or revisiting a childhood home. It calls to mind those famous lines from Eliot about never ceasing from exploration. “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started . . . .”