Five images from Benjamin Nørskov‘s long-term project EPA Sweden are published as national stamps by PostNord in Sweden.
Approximately a year ago, Benjamin Nørskov was contacted by PostNord, who wanted to use five of his images from the EPA Sweden project for national Swedish stamps. Together with Benjamin, the company selected the five images to represent the youth. The three images from Hagfors, Söderala and Falun were made during Benjamin’s study at DMJX.
Each stamp includes place and name(s) of the young people in the picture and credits Benjamin Nørskov. Benjamin started the project in the spring 2018 during his seventh term af DMJX and he still working on the project – photographing more young people and their EPA tractors.
EPA Sweden
In the rural areas of Sweden, teenage boys and girls aged 15 to 17 take advantage of a law that wasn’t initially intended for them. The law makes it possible to drive a car if you modify it to register as a tractor. The EPA tractors create a special kind of freedom for the young boys and girls, that suddenly find themselves able to live a more parent-independent life. The cars themselves can symbolize the stage between childhood and adulthood where you try everything for the first time – they are a way of experimenting with what adulthood feels like, without quite being there yet.
In many ways, the EPA tractor itself becomes a window into a unique kind of teenage life, that has never been documented as extensively as in this project. The cars reflect the personality and interests of the owner – changing colors, scent, and sound as the teenage years pass. The documentation works both as a way of portraying the emotions of the teenagers, and the physical manifestation of the EPA life as it looks like today, but it is also a way of preserving this unique part of Swedish culture for future generations to come.
The EPA Sweden project consists of a total of 75 portraits and other artifacts.
Since 2019 and till now, Benjamin Nørskov has had 11 solo exhibitions showing his project different places in Sweden. The project has, among other things, also been a part of The Lumix Festival and Nordic Light Festival.