fw-photography blogg: EVERYDAY MAJESTY • A Photo project on Charity & Inner Beauty • Monday 10 December to Sunday 16th December 2012

So Finally! After one year of planning the photo project EVERYDAY MAJESTY was made and completed. The original idea was that I wanted to do a big art event for the annual and national charity event Musikhjälpen.

The concept I thought about and contacted the project managers of Swedish TV/Radio in August 2011 was that I was going to photograph people with a replica of the State Diadem/Crown of Queen Elizabeth II, imitating the famous portrait of her on the British stamps (coins, banknotes etc.). The photograph which was used for the stamps was taken by the famous photographer John Hedgcoe which work I have been familiar to since I was small. The photo session took place at Buckingham Palace, London 22nd June in 1966, where John Hedgecoe rigged a studio for one day just for the session and made the shoot with Queen in different ligt settings. The photos were selected by the Queen herself and after was used as a original for the making of the postal stamp. The stamps were used throughout the British Empire and is considered to be the most reproduced photograph of all time estimating an edition of 200 Billion stamps. The original photographs were never meant to be official portraits or shown to the public.

My idea was to build a studio somewhere near the Stortorget (most central public square) in Malmö where the Radio and TV event was going to take place. And photograph people who are donating money to Musikhjälpen wearing the crown. The concept is that everyone can be a royalty and that your deeds and actions in life is what makes your character ..not your title or your surname.

After writing a project proposal which was accepted by Swedish TV/Radio I got to work.

Contacted a crown and jewelry maker in London who promised to have the replica of the crown ready in 5 weeks. I searched for a place at the location and made a deal with the cinema Biograf Spegeln (just at the main square) that I could rig a studio and photograph in their foyer / entrance. I also made sponsor deals with Scandinavian Photo for assisting me with studio equipment and with printers Arkitektkopia for flyers and banner for the project.

After a lot of work with plannig, meetings, sketching etc. It was finally time to build the studio which was done on the day of the event start, Monday 10th December. All went well and the first day was a bit slow. I created a Facebook group where the participants could collect their photos and made a virtual system for media and image logistics.

A huge banner was made at the printers that was selected and later hung in front of the cinema (se image below) and flyers was distributed around the city.

Second day I was interviewed in National TV and Radio and suddenly people started to drop in. Each day more and more people came by and the word was spreadin.

After one whole week of photographing for charity I had made a lot of portraits of many contributors and collected a larger amount of money for charity. Finally I closed down the studio on Sunday the 16th December and was more than satisfied over the outcome of the project.