Joakim Kocjancic
SOLVARV
Joakim Kocjancic (born 1975 in Milan) lives and works in Stockholm. He has worked with analogue photography for more than two decades, developing a distinctive visual language grounded in presence and the physical nature of light. His photobook Europea was awarded the Swedish Photo Book Prize in 2021. In 2024 he received first prize in the Gomma Black & White Award, an international photography prize focused on artistic black-and-white work, run by Gomma Books, a publisher known for exclusive, high-quality photobook editions and an artist-driven, non-commercial perspective. Kocjancic has exhibited widely across Europe, both in institutions and independent art spaces, and his work is represented in the collection of Moderna Museet as well as in private collections internationally. His forthcoming book Solvarv will be published by L’Artiere in 2026.
Joakim Kocjancic "Solvarv"
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Solvarv
In the middle of July, a four-hour car journey south of the city. Into the Swedish landscape, where there is forest, water, and light.
As in a dream, far from the urban terrain.
Without electricity or running water, close to one another, close to the moment and to nature.
On the outhouse, on the inside of the door, a small old newspaper clipping with a poem:
“I long for the land that is not,
for everything that is, I am weary of desiring.
The moon tells me in silvery runes
of the land that is not.
The land where all our longing is wondrously fulfilled,
the land where all our chains fall away,
the land where we cool our wounded brows
in the moon’s dew.
My life was a blazing delusion.
But one thing I have found, and one thing I have truly won:
the road to the land that is not.”
— Edith Södergran, from “The Land That Is Not”
In the middle of July, a four-hour car journey south of the city. Into the Swedish landscape, where there is forest, water, and light.
As in a dream, far from the urban terrain.
Without electricity or running water, close to one another, close to the moment and to nature.
On the outhouse, on the inside of the door, a small old newspaper clipping with a poem:
“I long for the land that is not,
for everything that is, I am weary of desiring.
The moon tells me in silvery runes
of the land that is not.
The land where all our longing is wondrously fulfilled,
the land where all our chains fall away,
the land where we cool our wounded brows
in the moon’s dew.
My life was a blazing delusion.
But one thing I have found, and one thing I have truly won:
the road to the land that is not.”
— Edith Södergran, from “The Land That Is Not”
"Light is not merely illumination; it settles on the skin, gathers in the grass, and flickers across water".
There are moments when time seems to open, and the world becomes held in a slower kind of light. Solvarv moves within such a moment. A return to the countryside in mid summer, where days are shaped by the sun’s arc across the sky and life takes on a quieter, more elemental rhythm. Here, light is not merely illumination; it is something that settles on the skin, gathers in the grass, flickers across water.
The title, Solvarv, refers to the turning of the year and the return of light. It is also the name of the house and the place where the photographs were made. A point on the map, but also a circle of time, a place one returns to. Days resemble one another, yet are never exactly the same. The photographs hold this subtle tension between what changes and what remains.
The title, Solvarv, refers to the turning of the year and the return of light. It is also the name of the house and the place where the photographs were made. A point on the map, but also a circle of time, a place one returns to. Days resemble one another, yet are never exactly the same. The photographs hold this subtle tension between what changes and what remains.
"The photographs form slowly, through attention, stillness, breath, and the memory of touch".
In the images, we move through forests, lakes, gardens and paths. Children run through sun-drenched fields. Nothing is staged. The camera follows what is already happening, close enough for presence to stay intact. Joakim Kocjancic works exclusively with analogue black-and-white photography. Grain, contrast and blur arise from time in the world rather than stylistic intention. The photographs form slowly, through attention, stillness, breath. They carry the memory of touch.
Solvarv was made over two summers, in a place without electricity or running water, where the day was structured by light itself. Time expands, loops, disappears. Like the poem taped to the outhouse door, Edith Södergran’s Landet som icke är, the work points toward a place sensed more than spoken. This exhibition does not ask the viewer to decode narrative. It invites a slowing: a remembering of how light once felt, on a similar day, somewhere else.
Solvarv was made over two summers, in a place without electricity or running water, where the day was structured by light itself. Time expands, loops, disappears. Like the poem taped to the outhouse door, Edith Södergran’s Landet som icke är, the work points toward a place sensed more than spoken. This exhibition does not ask the viewer to decode narrative. It invites a slowing: a remembering of how light once felt, on a similar day, somewhere else.