#Gunnar Lundh

[yama-bato]

Gräsö

by Gunnar Lundh

[lascitasdelashoras]

Gunnar Lundh - Estocolmo

[withnailrules]

Photo by Gunnar Lundh, 1941

[captain-price-unofficially]

American Consolidated B-24J Liberator "Princess Konocti" after an emergency landing at a civilian airfield in Halmstad, Sweden, 20 June 1944. Original color photography by Gunnar Lundh.

[dame-de-pique]

Gunnar Lundh - Läxläsning utanför skolkåtan, Lappland, 1930

[henk-heijmans]

Homework reading outside the schoolhouse, Lapland, Finland, ca. 1930 - by Gunnar Lundh (1898 - 1960), Swedish

[i12bent]

Hugo Alfvén (May 1, 1872 - 1960) was a Swedish composer and landscape painter - part of the Bohemian crowd of artists in Skagen in the summer. He was on the cusp between late national Romanticism and Impressionism. A Swedish hybrid of Debussy and Ralph Vaughan Williams, perhaps?

This photo from Nordiska museets arkiv by Gunnar Lundh shows Alfvén listening to his record player sometime in the late 1950s.

[alwaysalwaysalwaysthesea]

1941 photo by Gunnar Lundh.

(source: Nordiska Museet)

[las-microfisuras]

Jugando al hockey en Riddarfjärden, Estocolmo 1946

Foto: Gunnar Lundh

[sculpturedmelodies]

Gunnar Lundh

[vintage-sweden]

Photographer Gunnar Lundh, 1941, Sweden.

[secondlookblog]

I’ve always maintained two separate wardrobes: my urban wardrobe and my outdoors wardrobe. My urban wardrobe asserts itself, each piece selected for its potential to, when married (ideally in odd-couple fashion) with other bits and bobs of my sartorial collection, express (enchantingly) my titillating take on style and taste. It’s preciously curated vintage, amusing, unique, and often vaguely uncomfortable to wear. Certainly my clothing is a framework through which my interaction with my physical environment is mediated: a subway car, a downhill slant, a muddy shortcut each presents their own trials. Frequently I am prompted to modify my impulse to sit, run, stride, and lift based on the clothes I am wearing. I am a feminist who sometimes chooses to take mincing steps in tiny barbie shoes. Clothes are how I dance with the world. The terrain offers a provocation, and I respond with movement. Creativity, as it is often said, flourishes under constraint.

 My outdoors wardrobe is analogous to a mute button. Its form, most decorously, follows function. Its colors are utilitarian: black, mostly…navy, some…a few light blues in shades I would never otherwise entertain. It is engineered for superior performance and then produced en masse, designed to become industry standard. Perhaps this is why I feel so erased when I wear it. Or perhaps it is because I purchased it for value, on the spot, without going through the formative stage of covetousness, which builds the foundation for true love. Unlike my urban wardrobe, this clothing is made to enable movement without constraint; an invitation to the dance of my wildest dreams. Yet when I don that drab apparel I feel deeply…unchallenged. Now, mind you, what I mostly feel is grateful: in the mountains after sunset I am thanking god for the tech fabrics on my back, no equivocation. Without a doubt, function is paramount (on the Mount). It just feels wrong, though, that if the outdoors is where I go to realign with nature, and thus a higher spirituality (natural facts are symbols for spiritual facts,,,thank you, Emerson), I am forced to engage in this sacred ceremony in borrowed costume, in garb that presents me to the world in my most uninspired form.

 I’m ruminating on this morass of personal identity because I’ve just spent the past four months living in two weeks-worth of outdoors clothes, the very same I’ve just disparaged, repeating the combinations and permutations of a limited set over and over. At first, in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Washington, I was exhilarated to discover how little it took to stay warm, dry, and comfortable in all sorts of environments. Back in California a month later, living in my childhood bedroom (where there was no room to house the rest of my wardrobe, which thusly stayed in storage), the charm wore off. As the days passed, I expected to reach a moment when I stopped caring that I was wearing the same fleece-lined pants, hiking boots, and cotton t-shirt again. It never came. Every morning I issued an internal groan and laced up my motherfucking boots.

 Now that I am blissfully reunited with my marbled silk dress, my full-length poncho, and my steel-toed cowboy boots (among many other treasured johns), I’ve decided never to live that way again. It is time, I believe, to begin curating my outdoors wardrobe with as much wit, adoration, and intentionality as I do my urban wardrobe. Cue, vintage image research! I aspire to reach into the past and revive a time when functional outdoors clothing still consisted of beautiful garments. Despite being useful, these clothes look stylish, heavy, and hard (see Noah Johnson’s manifesto on “hard clothes”). In short, they look challenging.

Outdoors-wear is a wonderful opportunity for a statement hat. Loving the matching (collared!) sweater. C. 1930

Actress Dorothy Sebastian “trout fishing” in the CA mountains in the late 1920s. I would recreate this outfit head to toe. I own a pair of wader-style double-front pants (hunting pants, I think) and they are truly the most versatile item of clothing in my closet. Frequently used to offset a particularly dainty blouse or shoe. 

I want a peaked little pixie hat so badly. Once my friend Eliza tried on the perfect fur pixie hat in a vintage store and neither of us got it and Ive never found another one as good. Still think about that hat at least once a week. I’m on a fair isle cardigan kick, too. The polka dots are little tiny hearts if you look closely. Would love to incorporate a feminine print into my outdoors wardrobe. Photo by Gunnar Lundh, 1942.

Another head-to-toe perfect outfit. The white collared shirt! Denim, as we know, is the original outdoors fabric.....

Buffalo plaid WITH the tartan hat. Pattern mixing just does not get any better. Colby College Mountain Day, October 1950. 

One of the first female climbers, Miriam O’Brien Underhill, had to? chose to? climb in a NECKTIE (that looks like it’s about to strangle her, honestly). Makes the look, though. C. late 1920s 

Rope belt, and is that a black tight with a run in it that I spy? If not, it should be. 

I would wear either of their looks, but DAMN, THOSE JODHPURS. Actually, I want to scream about those boots and that perfect little jacket from the rooftops, too. Sometimes I look at these pictures and really wish I could be friends with these gals. 

Speaking of gals I’d like to be friends with... If the earlier photos are how I’d like to look in my new outdoors wardrobe, this is how I’d like to *feel.* Jaunty scarf and harlequin socks included, please. C. 1931

Elaine, Rocky Mountain National Park, 1946. Well, Elaine, you sure knew how to dress. This is my template for the marriage of form and function. And I would like a bite of whatever is in that packed lunch. Obviously something good, because it needed to come in the photo. 

Okay, I, too, would like to wake up in the woods, throw on some men’s slacks (preferably ones belonging to my sexy lumberjack bf), partially button my perfect flannel, and either do my hair up in a whimsical braid or else pop a turban over it. 

I tried to leave this one behind but then the memory of those culottes refused to quit my sweet little brain.  

Okay, side note, SO MANY images had campers eating bananas. Not the perfect travel food, due to the stink and propensity for bruising, no? Much ~suggestion~ was made online about these two ladies getting cozy with their bananas. I am above such tomfoolery. Beautiful fits. 

[simonarinaldi]

Ingmar Bergman. In chiesa, il silenzio di Dio ("Luci d'inverno") from Conversazioni Parallele on Vimeo.

Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007), "Luci d'inverno" ("Nattvardsgästerna", Svezia 1963). Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Ingmar Bergman. Fotografia: Sven Nykvist. Montaggio: Ulla Ryghe. Scenografia: P.A. Lundgren. Costumi: Mago. Trucco: Börje Lundh. Musiche: Evald Andersson. Con Ingrid Thulin: Märta Lundberg la maestra, Gunnar Björnstrand: il pastore Tomas Ericsson, Gunnel Lindblom: Karin Persson, Max von Sydow: Jonas Persson, Allan Edwall: Algot Frövik il sacrestano, Kolbjörn Knudsen: Knut Aronsson il guardiano, Olof Thunberg: Fredrik Blom l’organista, Elsa Ebbesen: Magdalena Ledfors, la vedova, Stefan Larsson: il figlio di Persson.

[dame-de-pique]

Gunnar Lundh - Lekande lappgosse. Skansen, Stockholm, c.1930

[lescuriositesdelafoire]

A woman smoking a cigarette. Photo: Gunnar Lundh, 1941

[yesterdaysprint]

Gunnar Lundh: Kungsgatan, Stockholm, 1945