Oct 15, 2009
This is Stockholm after midnight last June, during one of the white nights near the summer solstice. The tower in the foreground is part of the Old Town, which dates back to the thirteenth century. The cranes in the background are building the part of town that will date back to the twenty-first century.
Apr 30, 2013
Stockholm's 110-km metro rail system has been described as one long tubular art gallery. Exposed bedrock in dozens of the stations has been painted and sculpted by a variety of artists from Sweden and beyond.
Consider this posting another entry in an occasional series: Places I've never been and stuff I've never seen and don't honestly know much of anything about, but damn.
Jun 21, 2016
Right outside Rosenbad, the prime minister's chancery in central Stockholm, sits this homeless woman with the face of a fox, huddled in a blanket, with a baby animal, perhaps a fox cub, perhaps a teddy bear, in her lap.
The sculpture, a permanent installation on the granite sidewalk, is from artist Laura Ford's series Rag and Bone. In 2009, the city's newspaper by and for homeless people, known as Situation Sthlm, conducted a poll on where to put the statue; the winning location was this very public and political site.
The fox also has a single boot in her lap, into which passers by frequently drop euros. People who are uncertain about dontating to living, breathing homeless people somehow feel that leaving money for a bronze fox is a good thing to do. That's the world we live in.