Karl Lärka

After his education at Brunnsvik, Lärka started working on commission as a documentary photographer. In 1919 he was engaged by the local history association of Dalarna to document people in the village of Finngruvan in Venjan, Dalarna. The project was part of a racial study of a kind then regarded as scientific. Little is known about Lärka's own opinions about such studies. It is known that he was not that interested in the categorizing of the people of Dalarna in different groups according to their skulls, and preferred to listen to the stories of the old men. He was known for having no respect for representatives of the authorities, and took a well-known photograph of Dan Andersson while Andersson was making a fool of the Stockholm ethnologists in the project. Lärka tried to get the Nordic Museum interested in making an inventory of the parish of Sollerön and tried to get funds to gather his notes and photos. He did not succeed in any of this. Lärka became recognized as a good photographer, but his commitment to preserving and documenting the culture of the lands around lake Siljan was first recognized many years later. By this time, Lärka started his lecture tours. They started as picture shows for friends and others in the villages around Siljan, with the help of a so-called sciopticon. It was the first time many in the audience had experienced any of the forerunners of cinema. After a while the activity grow larger and Lärka's lecture tours were included in tours organised from Stockholm, with many lecturers involved. Lärka lectured during 1920 all over Sweden, often dressed in Sollerö costume and sometimes together with the folk musician Axel Myrman. At the same time, Lärka still documented, both in writing and photos, his home district on his own initiative. • Illustration — Axi fäbodar, 1920. Photo: Karl Lärka/Mora Bygdearkiv. In 1924 he assisted Gustaf Ankarcrona in photographing old wall-paintings in Dalarna. The whole work was supposed to result in an exhibition and a book, but Ankarcrona became ill during the inventory trip and never fully recovered; as a consequence, the book was never printed. The material was eventually published in Svante Svärdström's doctoral thesis from 1949 Lärka's colour photographs were made by separation negatives, because colour film was not widely known.

• Illustration — Village street in Östnor, the doorway of Rombogården to the right. Photo: Karl Lärka/Mora Bygdearkiv. Karl Lärka's photographs are characterized by his concern to document a disappearing culture. People, animals, and buildings are portrayed in their own context. The people cultivate the land, work in the forest, build houses, wash clothes, cook, or pose with working horses. He describes weddings, people, interiors, transhumance, and village streets with a great sense of feeling for composition and quality. Many of Lärka's portraits are typically documentary. People are portrayed in their daily chores, often in positions and with attributes they chose themselves. They differ significantly from the studio portraits of that time, in which people often dressed up and posed. With his connection to the Swedish labour movement, Lärka was known as a "democratic photographer". He let people decide for themselves what to wear, how they wanted to stand, and whether or not they should smile or not. The documentary work procedure of Lärka is also shown in his recording of older people's stories, a method he combined with his photography. During his photographic career, Lärka experienced great developments in photographic technique. In the early days of the 20th century he used photographic plates, like all other serious photographers. He got his first box camera during his time at a folk high school. Later he changed for a larger-format American camera acquired from a retailer who had bought it for photographing thieves in his shop at Sollerön. Lärka experimented with mixtures of magnesium and potassium permanganate for flash and did "reverted" enlargements before enlargers arrived, by illuminating photographic paper through the camera lens. Later, when he had access to an enlarger, Lärka copied his pictures onto fine-grain film to be able to show his pictures in his skioptikon (an early form of slide projector) at his lectures. The large plates were heavy, and when they were exposed, Lärka was forced to find a dark space and reload. When the first sheet film arrived, his work was made easier and there was no longer any risk that the light would disappear while reloading, which sometimes had happened before. One of his cameras was an American large format camera, made for 13×18 in (33×46 cm) plates, equipped with separate shutter (Thornton-Pickard Snap-Shot, 1–1/80 sec), Aplanat B no 4 lens from E Suter (Basel) and separate Waterhouse stop (1:4 or 1:8). He also used three smaller folding cameras for the format 10×15 cm. In later life, when he no longer photographed professionally, he got a modern camera for 135 film and took both color and black-and-white photos.

• Johansson, Sune & Lärka, Karl (1974) Karl Lärkas Dalarna, LTs Förlag, Borås, • Romson, Anna (2004) Kråk Ulof i Bäck å ann rikti folk. Fotografier av Karl Lärka 1916–1934., with a foreword by Per Wirtén, Modernista, Göteborgstryckeriet, • Sandström, Birgitta (2001) Karl Lärka - odalman, fotograf, hembygdsvårdare, Zornsamlingarna, Västervik,