My so-called career started in the mid-70s in the punk era. I was 17 when punk arrived and its spirit influenced me profoundly. Anyone could play music or be a photographer – anybody could be anything. One of my first pictures was of Joe Strummer. I tagged along with a journalist friend and knocked on his motel door. A week later I was hanging out with the Jam in Malmö. I worked for many years as a rock photographer, and then as a photojournalist in Nicaragua and South Africa, but today I mostly work with classical musicians. My photographs try to bring that rock’n’roll energy into classical music and opera.
This photo was taken on a sunny day in Stockholm at the Drottningholm Palace theatre, part of one of the Swedish king and queen’s residences. It’s a fantastic 18th-century building, a Unesco heritage site which hosts an opera festival each summer.
