The photos in this book were taken in Sörmland, Sweden, during the summers of 2021 and 2022.

Allen Wheatcroft's images have been about the study of people through a street photography aesthetic and orientation. In this new body of work presented as companion books, The Northside and Björkevägen (Birch Road), Wheatcroft is still exploring people and their influences and idiosyncrasies, but now through a study of place and environment.

In his new work, the photographer turns his attention to structures and spaces in two settings, the city of Chicago and rural Sweden, and how these places are shaped by human presence, relations, and impact. The work also defines "home"; conflicting emotions about home fill Wheatcroft’s photographs of Chicago and Sweden. About the dual project, the photographer says that he is "drawn to barriers and feelings of separation and loneliness fostered by how we shape our landscapes."

In his seminal book on photography, Ways of Seeing, art critic and writer John Berger noted, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”

This view speaks to the images in The Northside and, more broadly, to Wheatcroft's outlook on his recent work. By documenting both the north of Chicago, and the Swedish countryside in a related effort, and presenting the books as two nested parts of a single project, Wheatcroft invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between two distant geographic spaces as well as their shared humanistic aspects.

Björkevägen (Birch Road)

While Wheatcroft has lived for 15 years on Chicago’s northside in the city’s historic Swedish neighborhood, during the pandemic he began spending summers in rural Sweden, in a small village along the Baltic Sea in eastern Sörmland. The colors bloom throughout the images he made there, and the tranquil and peaceful character he finds in the place is made apparent through the human-made structures and natural world he photographed.

Wheatcroft says, "The images in Björkevägen reflect a tension I feel in the real and imagined space between belonging and being an outsider, between trying to enter a place and finding it, or myself, recalcitrant, seeing a world apart even as I approach it."

The photos in this book were taken in Sörmland, Sweden, during the summers of 2021 and 2022.

Allen Wheatcroft's images have been about the study of people through a street photography aesthetic and orientation. In this new body of work presented as companion books, The Northside and Björkevägen (Birch Road), Wheatcroft is still exploring people and their influences and idiosyncrasies, but now through a study of place and environment.

In his new work, the photographer turns his attention to structures and spaces in two settings, the city of Chicago and rural Sweden, and how these places are shaped by human presence, relations, and impact. The work also defines "home"; conflicting emotions about home fill Wheatcroft’s photographs of Chicago and Sweden. About the dual project, the photographer says that he is "drawn to barriers and feelings of separation and loneliness fostered by how we shape our landscapes."

In his seminal book on photography, Ways of Seeing, art critic and writer John Berger noted, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”

This view speaks to the images in The Northside and, more broadly, to Wheatcroft's outlook on his recent work. By documenting both the north of Chicago, and the Swedish countryside in a related effort, and presenting the books as two nested parts of a single project, Wheatcroft invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between two distant geographic spaces as well as their shared humanistic aspects.

Björkevägen (Birch Road)

While Wheatcroft has lived for 15 years on Chicago’s northside in the city’s historic Swedish neighborhood, during the pandemic he began spending summers in rural Sweden, in a small village along the Baltic Sea in eastern Sörmland. The colors bloom throughout the images he made there, and the tranquil and peaceful character he finds in the place is made apparent through the human-made structures and natural world he photographed.

Wheatcroft says, "The images in Björkevägen reflect a tension I feel in the real and imagined space between belonging and being an outsider, between trying to enter a place and finding it, or myself, recalcitrant, seeing a world apart even as I approach it."