TEODOR JAVANAUD EMDEN
SKALGUBBAR
Meet the person behind one of your favorites entourage website, Skalgubbar! Teodor Javanaud Emdén started this online library with high-quality free cutout images as a personal online library and is now a success around the Architecture community!
Him and his friends have been helping you populate your images since 2013 with very unique characters (like a woman casually feeding birds, two people having a windy picnic and a celebration worthy of two paper crowns!)
During this interview, Teodor will talk about why he started this website, his future plans and more.
About: In a few words, describe yourself and your work / website.
My name is Teodor, I'm the founder, photographer, editor, web developer and errand boy at Skalgubbar, and the rest of my time I work as an architect at Snøhetta in Oslo.
What is Skalgubbar? Why did you start it?
Skalgubbar is a photo collection of people releaved from their context, that I have been working on continuously since 2011. I started it because I needed some entourage for my own projects and thought I put them on a blog so I could easily find them. Then the site attracted more users one by one.
What does "Skalgubbar" mean? Why did you choose this name for the website?
Skalgubbar means really 'scale guys' or more scale old guys' in Swedish. It was a working name, but it stuck.
Do you have a criteria of which kind of entourage you include on your website?
Since I'm not doing Skalgubbar for anyone's pleasure except for my own, I can do as I want, but a few criterias has crystalized themselves since the beginning. I take all of the photos myself, only people I know personally, colorful, people in some kind of activity, chronological.
Have you considered expanding your library with cutouts of objects, landscape, pets, etc, or do you want to keep Skalgubbar exclusively with people cutouts? Why?
No I'm all about the human scale, I love trees and pets but this project place people first :)
Do you curate the photographs or are these cut outs from existing images?
They are all my friends and it is kind of the journal of my life.
Do you know all the people from the cutouts?
Yes! Except one.
We see renderings with Skalgubbar’s entourage being used all over the Architecture community. What do you think people find appealing about Skalgubbar? What makes Skalgubbar unique?
I hope people think it is something special, appreciate all the work gone into this, and that the personal touch and quirkiness goes through - but I think that for a lot of people it is just an easily accessible source of cut out people as well as any other site, which is fine too.
Many of the cutouts are photos of yourself. How does it feel to be featured in professional and student renderings?
Haha! Well I guess here is where the ego shines... but really I do enjoy seeing my friends more!
How have your friends, who are also part of your library, reacted to it?
Everyone so far has been exceptionally positive to be featured! Which is great, otherwise this project would have been tough to pull off. Since I don't use names it is still semi anonymous too, which might helped.
What challenges have you encountered so far in creating Skalgubbar?
The main one, the hot potato, is ethnicity. Hate mails peaked in 2015 when I got a ton, but still they come from time to time, which I find odd. My library reflects my friends, family and my reality, and though _many_ nationalities are included, maybe not as much skin color variety as some of my users would like. I am very aware of the situation but I am also equally very uncomfortable chasing specific ethnicities with my camera. I do however look forward to have more ethnicities represented. But in the meanwhile there are many sites that popped up answering to just this topic, so I believe there is a balance. Use Skalgubbar responsibly!
“My library reflects my friends, family and my reality”
What would you like the architectural community to know about your website?
I'm not a racist, I will not publish your image submissions (though some of them are not bad!), the pictures are meant to be used for architecture projects only.
What is your perspective on adding entourage to an image? What importance does it have and what do you think people should be aware of when composing their images?
We build for humans, so to be aware of human scale during the whole design process is important. People in pictures of architecture is good.
Could you tell us your future plans for Skalgubbar?
I will keep on keeping on. I would like to do more physical products, especially since the pins I sell turned out so beautiful! I have some products in the pipeline, but man it takes time... what stuff would you like to have from Skalgubbar?
Also some nude images would be fun!
Besides creating Skalgubbar, you’re also a full-time Architect! What advice would you give to young designers?
Small personal side projects can be very rewarding.
“Small personal side projects can be very rewarding.”
Teodor, thank you for taking the time to interview with Arch-Vizz!
Do you have any questions for Teodor? Leave a comment!
You can find more about Skalgubbar at Skalgubbar.se and on instagram @skalgubbar
Make sure to check out his online shop !
Interview & Images Courtesy: Skalgubbar - Teodor Javanaud Emdén
Interviewer: Stefani Fachini