Charles Swedlund: Circa 1955

The Photography of

Charles Swedlund

CIRCA 1955

We at the Stephen Daiter Gallery are especially proud to present to Chicago and the art world the newly released work of an American master photographer. Charles Swedlund, Chicago born and bred, attended Lane Tech High School before he discovered the city’s renowned Institute of Design, America’s answer to the great German Bauhaus. As an artist Swedlund spent his life combining aesthetics and technologies to create a stunning body of photographic works both beautiful and intellectually rigorous.

Until now, Swedlund has remained largely unknown to the collecting public, despite his inclusion in countless exhibitions and museum collections, and a thirty-year teaching career that included authorship of one of the standard texts in the field, Photography: A Handbook of History, Materials,and Processes. One simple reason for this is that the artist himself has only concerned himself with his own work as a photographer and a teacher, never before having sought out gallery representation. We were thrilled for the rare opportunity to come across such a large and intact oeuvre, especially given that it’s one of the most exciting and diverse bodies of photography to emerge from the I.D. since 1950.

And, “Circa 1955” represents only the proverbial tip of the iceberg – an amazing compilation of work in a very short span of time. Don’t miss it.

“Charles Swedlund is a remarkable figure in the last half-century of creative photography. A man of richly varied talents, Swedlund has left an indelible mark as an artist, a teacher, an author, and more. It is, in fact, the rich diversity of his dedication to the medium that perhaps not surprisingly, has made it difficult for the field as a whole to grasp the quality and originality of his life’s achievement.”
Keith F. Davis
Senior Curator of Photography
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art