Biography

Kristina Eriksson (7.12.1944-2.8.2015)

Kristina’s most important personal theme was social-political photography. In particular, she was interested in the situation of women in working life, the lives of women in socialist shortages, and the exploitation of women in general. These are the women Kristina has photographed on all her journeys. Other topics were also the life of children in Romania, Albania, Bulgaria on the street and in children’s homes as well as the gay movement in West Berlin.

Her work area covers West and East Berlin, East Germany, and the socialist countries of the so-called “Eastern bloc”. In particular the Soviet Union, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. She also traveled as a photographer to Cuba several times and to Vietnam, Japan and Argentina.

She has co-worked on two books about Berlin for Norsted and Utbidningsförlaget and her pictures have been published in countless German photo books as well as in various television documentaries. Their main clients were: Expressen, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Industri, Ny Teknik, Chaplin, Film Mirror, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, and other German and Scandinavian newspapers.

The archive, which Kristina left behind, contains about 20,000 digitized photographs and 50,000 negatives, black and white, and color, as well as about 3,000-4,000 paper prints.

In 1970 moving from Stockholm to West Berlin and study of the German language at the Goethe-Institut.
In 1972, her son was born.
From 1979 to 1985 she was politically active as school spokesperson and later as parents spokeswoman for the whole Berlin school administration.
From 1978 she worked as a simultaneous translator at the Berlin Film Festival and made translations for various Swedish newspapers.
In 1978 first time visit Cuba and her first steps as a photographer. After that, she took a serious interest in photography and learned camera technology, as well as the darkroom work under Dietrich Wenske, Berlin.
In 1980 starting to work as a professional press photographer, at first in sports (Rocky Rocigani, Wasserfreunde Spandau, Reinickendorfer Foxes (ALBA Berlin) …) and local political events.
From 1982 she started to go on journalistic travels, at first in eastern Germany to socialist cultural meetings, documentary and film festivals as well as literary events. Here she met and portrayed among others. Frank Beyer, W.B. Heine Mueller, Herta Mueller, Jurek Becker, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, and Erwin Eschonnek. As a Swede, she got a permanent visa from the GDR.
She later photographed personalities from politics and business as well as numerous artists on later reports for German and Scandinavian newspapers at home and abroad. – Fidel Castro, Helmut Schmid, Oskar Lafontaine, Erich Honecker, Egon Krenz, Birgit Breuel, Sven Jörgensson, Wolfgang Schäuble, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Friedrich Duerrenmatt, Erich Fried, Gunter Grass, Jochen Graubner, Guenter Uecker, Ingmar Bergmann, Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola, Frederico Fellini, Sydney Pollack, Aki Kaurismäki, Hanna Schygulla, Dustin Hoffmann, Melina Mercouri, Catrin Deneuve, Shirley MacLaine, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Danny de Vito.
In the years 1983 to 1987, she accompanied Udo Lindenberg at his concerts in Germany and Moscow. She was also present as the only photographer during his talks with the GDR political leadership behind closed doors.
From 1985-2005 she photographed throughout the Berlin film festivals and was able to make some very personal portraits of actors and directors.
In 1993 she received the Berlin Women’s Prize for her photo documentation of the situation of women in Berlin.
In 1998 scholarship of the Svenska Institute for a photojournalistic view of the position of women in Japanese society. Japanstiftelsen
In 2000 Exhibition at the Willy Brandt Haus Berlin with works from the Berlinale.
In 2006 moving to Smedstorp in the south of Sweden.
From 2006 to 2015 she made div. Local photo-portages for Swedish newspapers, as well as trips to Vietnam and Shanghai.
Various exhibitions in southern Sweden.
On August the 2nd 2015, Kristina died of a heart attack in her house in Gardlösa.