At the risk of repeating last year’s blogpost too much I must say that I do enjoy shooting at the Pride Parade in Malmö, Sweden. It’s such a celebration of diversity and inclusion and letting everyone be who they really are. However, when I walked around the warm-up area next to the City Library I couldn’t really feel the enthusiasm I’d felt last year, the first time since the pandemic that the Parade was back. That had nothing to do with the Parade or the subjects in front of me, it was all me. I recently came home from a three week trip to the USA where I ended up shooting several hundred pictures (still to be processed)…so I guess I was a bit photo-ed out.

*I ran into Sven and Susanne, two of my long time photo buddies, at the Parade. Always fun to nerd out with these two!*

I knew though that the potential for some interesting and colorful photography was there so I decided to go into Malmö anyway, my photographic “apathy” be damned! At first though it was a bit of a…I wouldn’t call it struggle…more of a using a photographic autopilot when I walked around the warm-up area. There were many potential images that I chose not to take…mostly because it felt like I had done them at previous Parades. Still I think I landed a fair few images from the warm-up spot and I am sharing them here below.

The warm-up was supposed to last from noon to 1 PM so at around 12.45 I left the park and walked about a block away to a good spot in the shade where I could hopefully land a few good shots of the people about to walk past. By now there were A LOT of people getting ready to set off on the path, to my untrained eyes it seemed a more crowded parade than last year so things were looking very promising. By then I had regained whatever photographic mojo I hadn’t felt when I started the day and was eager to capture as much of the parade as possible. It wasn’t till 1.20 PM that I saw the four police horses leading the way and the first people holding up flags and signs appeared in the street crossing next to the library. After them followed thousands and thousands of people, showing their support for tolerance, inclusion and “loving thy neighbor”.

According to the local newspaper there had been close to 7,000 people in the parade and many more than that lining the streets. Given how long it took for the parade to walk past me I am not at all surprised by that estimate…to my untrained eyes it seemed like more than that!