After listening to Alec Baldwin’s interesting recent interview with Estonian conductor, Paavo Järvi, I was reminded of a tangential subject. Five years ago, I started working on a 240-page coffee table book with 54 interviews and portraits of the folk working behind the scenes at Malmö’s premier cultural institution, Malmö Opera. The book was aptly titled, “We are Malmö Opera/Vi är Malmö Opera” and though I’ve since produced several other books, I still consider the opera book to be my career’s magnum opus. At least so far.

With time, I tend to forget how much effort and affection goes into my book projects. Especially those where the human component is so central. With the opera book, I was thrust into a world where I had very limited knowledge, but over time learned so much about and became in awe of.

A multitude of technical complexities (like lens and lighting choices), thousands of small and large creative options, and months of social interaction and policy navigation made producing content for the book an inspiring challenge. And it’s really only when I dig deep into the vast archive of published and unpublished photographs from that 6-month project, that I fully grasp how tremendous an undertaking it was. According to Bokus, the book is now out of print. But you can read more about the project here: www.operaboken.se