Skåne, Sweden, 2010 – 2012
 
Martin Bogren portrays a group of teenagers in a rural region of southern Sweden, where he himself grew up. These youngsters have a ritual to gather at night in a large deserted field to drive tractorcars at insane speeds. Tractor EPAs are old cars converted for agricultural use that the law allows them to drive from the age of 15. In between races and challenges, they laugh, talk, flirt, fall asleep, safe and isolated in their play world before growing up and getting on with life.
 
 
“Martin Bogren has been accepted into a world clearly prohibited to adults. He doesn’t let himself be carried away by the exuberance of what he sees, or the excess, nor does he allow any complacency. A silent witness, he observes. (….. ) Somewhere between a group portrait, delicately isolating faces and expressions, and a chronicle of a life dreaming of going as fast as possible, the photographer manages not to disrupt the world into which he immerses himself, with decency, with attention and acuity, and with respect, without judging – holding his breath. We feel this in the attention to light, the grey tonality contrasting calmly with the intensity of the action. First kisses, and first flirtations, cigarettes inhaled deeply, tracks that wind across the tarmac, hair blowing in the wind, life at breakneck speed – an episode repeated by appointment against the backdrop of the smoke of the factories. We cannot know anything of this world, it is not for sharing, it belongs to these young people who are leaving childhood and want to believe that they have become grown up. But the photographer, because he has understood the position that he should take, half-opens the door. He marks these minute-moments, moments we recognize. We want to connect them to each other – to reconstruct relationships that can be understood only through what we can draw from our own memories.”
Christian Caujolle
 
(Excerpt of the essay written by Christian Caujolle in the book Tractor Boys, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2013)