MJÖLK
Photography / Graphic / Video / Texts
2024 - ongoing
Photographer Mats Engfors - Instagram: @fotographicsweden or Facebook: @Fotographic
Installationsphoto from Havremagasinet 2025
During 2024 and 2025 I have expolored the theme in different mediums. During the summer of 2025, I collected different types of milk cartons, l mixed the color of the package on the cover and color the cartons and then make a gravure print with them. The thought of the function of the milk carton, the distribution of food and our relationship to where the food comes from strikes me as I crank the printing press. Fresh milk.
Every print has their own titel.
For a summerexhibition I made a soundinstallation. From a milk stand (also called mjölkpall or mjölkbrygga) a sound is played from the empty milk can is the sound of a milking machine milking cows. The stands and the distribution of milk with milk cans disappeared when milk tankers replaced the trucks. Today, they often hold flowers, mailboxes, or other decorative items.
The installation is based on a photograph of a milk stand in Sotenäs Municipality, Bohuslän, from 1991, combined with the Swedish Dairy Association’s recommended blueprints that were sent out to farmers who were building their own milk stands. The photograph and the blueprints were published in The History of the Milk Stand – A Study of the More Than Fifty-Year-Long Milk Stand Era by Torsten Sigfridsson in 1995.
This is an ongoing process; the startingpoint is my grandmother's farm in Tornevalley, through photography, video and text I want to see what has happened to the dairy farms in the north and what they are used for today.
After my grandmother passed away, I inherited a pile of tea towels that no one else seemed to want. In that pile was a parade towel in a blue checkered pattern, with a wreath of flowers winding like an oval around a black and white cow with a blue bow around its neck. The cow on the towel is said to be of the black and white variety, which produces a lot of milk and is one of the most common cows in Sweden today. My grandmother was one of many who replaced her mountain cows with the black and white breed that could produce more milk in order to increase the profitability of a small farm.
Just by looking at how the dairy industry followed the political swings for a century, many questions arise: The farmers, the cows and the milk had been encouraged and exalted during the Second World War, but shortly afterwards the political message changed, formally through a parliamentary decision in 1947: Sweden should become a modern industrial country! Sell the cows! A quote that I found by Sune Jonsson reads as follows: "And agricultural policy was the awareness that the farmer's work was necessary for the nation's livelihood."
In a study conducted at SLU by Carin Martiin, it is clear that the number of cows has more than halved in 40 years. In 1980, there were 656,000 dairy cows distributed over just over 42,000 herds with an average of about 16 cows. In 2019, there were just under 306,000, distributed over 3,174 herds - the herd had increased from 16 to 96 cows. Already in 1980, people were worried, because when you looked back to 1950 - the number of cows was then 1,654,000 and the number of herds 267,000 with an average of 6 cows. In the study that Martiin did, there was also a strong picture that many farmers wanted to continue with milk production, but that it still did not happen.
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Colliographic 2025
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Installationsphoto from Bjurholmsbiennalen 2025
After my grandmother passed away, I inherited a pile of tea towels that no one else seemed to want. In that pile was a parade towel in a blue checkered pattern, with a wreath of flowers winding like an oval around a black and white cow with a blue bow around its neck. The cow on the towel is said to be of the black and white variety, which produces a lot of milk and is one of the most common cows in Sweden today. My grandmother was one of many who replaced her mountain cows with the black and white breed that could produce more milk in order to increase the profitability of a small farm.
Just by looking at how the dairy industry followed the political swings for a century, many questions arise: The farmers, the cows and the milk had been encouraged and exalted during the Second World War, but shortly afterwards the political message changed, formally through a parliamentary decision in 1947: Sweden should become a modern industrial country! Sell the cows! A quote that I found by Sune Jonsson reads as follows: "And agricultural policy was the awareness that the farmer's work was necessary for the nation's livelihood."
In a study conducted at SLU by Carin Martiin, it is clear that the number of cows has more than halved in 40 years. In 1980, there were 656,000 dairy cows distributed over just over 42,000 herds with an average of about 16 cows. In 2019, there were just under 306,000, distributed over 3,174 herds - the herd had increased from 16 to 96 cows. Already in 1980, people were worried, because when you looked back to 1950 - the number of cows was then 1,654,000 and the number of herds 267,000 with an average of 6 cows. In the study that Martiin did, there was also a strong picture that many farmers wanted to continue with milk production, but that it still did not happen.
