Marcel Winatschek

What Alexander Bergström Doesn’t Hide

Alexander Bergström shoots people naked the way most photographers can’t manage to shoot people clothed—without the invisible negotiation between subject and lens that usually turns nudity into either art-school exercise or provocation. The Swedish photographer has a gift for making bare skin look matter-of-fact, which is much harder than it sounds. His images don’t leer and they don’t flinch. They just look, steadily, at bodies being bodies, and somehow that’s more disarming than anything more deliberately charged would be.