Caj Bremer

80 year old Caj Bremer has been a photographer for over 60 years and it’s still going strong. He has received a lifetime award for his contribution to the art of photography in Finland. He’s the first photographer to ever receive a lifetime award.

In 2001 he wrote a book called “Mämmikoiran muistelmat” (loosely translated to A klutz’s memoirs}, where he tells about his life as a photographer.
In 1949, Bremer was in his twenties and a typical young man from Helsinki. He had finished his army service, and had no idea what profession he wished to persue. Thanks to family and some lucky coincidences Bremer ended up as a apprentice photographer. In a few years, he had become a skilful photographer for Viikkosanomat, a weekly newspaper.
In the book he tells stories about where he’s been and what he’s seen, about when he travelled with Kekkonen (Finland’s president ’52-‘82}. It’s an easy book to read, you get great laughs when he tells about his mistakes and successes.
The book is filled with photos taken throughout his career and shows very well what he’s best at, capturing the small intimate moments of everyday human life.

Bremer’s reports about life in Finland and from the far end of the world gave people some idea of what reality really looked like. His way of approaching the people, where his subjects are always honest and respectful, no matter was the subject royalties or poor people far up North.
It’s not without reason that the 50’s and 60’s is called photojournalism’s golden age. As at that time magazines were really important and even television was just starting to arrive and people couldn’t even image something like the internet.
Caj Bremer’s work is first and foremost as a mediator of human feelings and impressions. Bremer started his carrier at same time as the realist photographic style – where the most important thing is the photographer’s attitude to his subjects, the photographer shows humans with dignity. This is indeed Bremer’s strength.
You could almost say that if the photographic world would have been as well networked as it is now, Bremer would probably been a close associate with people like Henri Cartier-Bresson and his photographs would have been considered equal to Doisneau’s and Brassaïs photographs, but times were different and Bremer has stayed as a fairly unknown photographer outside Finland.

But I still think that Bremer belongs to one of the few who have the talent to make the small fleeting moments into moments that last forever