STOCKHOLM.- A Good Home for Everyone is a photography-based exhibition about the Swedish majority society’s attitude to the Roma. The exhibition particularly focuses on the historic turning point when the Roma people won the right to speak for themselves in society, thus securing their civil rights. Two photographers captured this transformation: Anna Riwkin in the mid-1950s, and Björn Langhammer a decade later. The pictorial archives they left behind form the core of this exhibition.

A Good Home for Everyone challenges the image and idea of the good home and the modern Sweden that Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson set out in 1928. In contrast, the exhibition traces the contours of a 20th-century characterized by acts of racism and discrimination by government agencies. From closed borders and eugenics, to secret investigations and records. Anna Riwkin’s (1908–1970) and Björn Langhammer’s (1933–1986) photographic oeuvres offer us a view into the conditions for Swedish minorities and a piece of modern history that has largely been omitted from official narratives about Sweden. The pervasiveness of persecution, discrimination and racism in our society has been overshadowed by concepts such as solidarity, the welfare state, the People’s Home, a progressive nation, and record-breaking years. The two sets of photographs also raise questions about the role of the camera and the photographer in the documentary situation. The exhibition conducts a critical discussion of these questions, which seen more broadly are about representing and being represented.

“If there is one aim of this exhibition, it is to remind us all of a dual history that should be general knowledge: the systematic oppression to which our government and authorities subjected an ethnic minority; and the battle for civil and equal rights waged against this oppression in Sweden in the 1960s,” says Fredrik Liew

Placing Anna Riwkin’s and Björn Langhammer’s photographic works side by side uncovers a tale of power and entitlement, about who can make their voice heard. Up to 1960 or so, the Roma were rarely seen or heard on their own terms. If they were represented at all, it was by someone from the majority. Anna Riwkin’s photogrpahs from 1954-55 thus resulted from commissions to take photographs for a series of reportages that the author Ivar Lo-Johansson wrote for Vi (We) magazine. The political activism that emerged during the 1960s, with Katarina Taikon as its figurehead, radically altered the situation. The anti-racist movement made it possible to fight a battle that followed the Roma’s own agenda. Björn Langhammer, who was married to Katarina Taikon, was part of this movement and, for example, photographed activists petitioning Prime Minister Tage Erlander to introduce adult education for the Roma, and taking part in the great May Day march in 1965. Katarina Taikon features in both series of photographs: in 1954, as a 22-year old woman thirsting after knowledge, portrayed by Riwkin inside and outside Stockholm Public Library; and in 1965 as an agitator, a famous activist and author at the front of a protest march.

”Katarina Taikon is one of the 20th century’s most important human-rights figures in Sweden. Her place in Swedish public life during this period reflects the major changes that took place over the course of ten years. It is an important chapter in our modern history,” says Lawen Mohtadi,

A Good Home for Everyone is showing all the photographs in Anna Riwkin’s and Björn Langhammer’s bodies of photographic work. Apart from the photographs, the exhibition also includes documentation and moving images showing how the Swedish authorities continually discriminated against Roma, from the entry ban of 1914-1954 to the police in Skåne keeping an illegal register of Roma in 2013.