E C V, Pacifico and Woolgather are three photo series by Dan Isaac Wallin. The images feature different locations and motifs – from a fisherman’s hut on the west coast of Sweden, to Pacific Ocean horizons, to landscapes on Iceland.

E C V is being shown at Bohusläns Museum in an exhibition context for the first time. It tells a tale of labour, traditions and lost worlds. The series begins with a seaside hut in Edsvik, a tiny village on Sweden’s west coast, where Dan’s interest in his family’s long history as fishermen was rekindled. The large-format black-and-white photos were created with an older style camera and Polaroid film with large negatives – a fitting technique for the motifs.  

Old-fashioned fishing equipment portrayed against a white background, hung on the outer wall of the hut where the tools were once used. The overall effect is to evoke curiosity: These are not old castoffs from a second-hand shop, but tools manufactured and used by the same family for generations. The artifacts belonged to Dan’s grandfather Erik and Erik’s brothers Collin and Verner, giving rise to the title E C V.  

The old fisherman’s hut, which the family still owns, had an inexorable pull on Dan, and his work gradually evolved from documentation to something deeper. The materials, design and wear of the tools evince experiences from a working life that shaped generations. Through his photos, Dan is collecting the memories of those who are no longer with us, and passing them along.  

The Pacifico photo series consists of pictures taken from a mountain top in Mexico. Dan climbed to this lookout point daily for months to photograph the Pacific Ocean in all its different forms.  

Woolgather conveys the grand beauty of the Icelandic landscape. The pictures portray a world where nature and fairytale merge. A dreamy melancholy in which nature becomes poetry and stillness becomes presence. 

“I’ve always been fascinated by the gradual shifts in the landscape. Being out in nature is pure meditation – hours spent in the same place, observing the constant changing of the horizon. My photos capture our need for silence and reflection. What could be more primal than the sea, the mountains and the earth?” —Dan Isaac Wallin