Lars Tunbjörk - Office / LA Office

Tunbjörk's iconic 2001 photobook of corporate melancholy is re-published in a luxurious slipcased edition, alongside an exclusive, unreleased series. 

Loose Joints is honoured to announce the posthumous re-publication of Office by legendary Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk, alongside the release of LA Office – an unpublished series completed shortly before his passing. Tunbjörk's iconic series from the turn of the 21st century delves into the bureaucracy, disorder, and mundanity of office culture with masochistic delight, capturing the soul-sapping environments of corporate spaces with unparalleled insight.

Over five years, Tunbjörk explored offices across Stockholm, New York, and Tokyo, photographing 'like an alien' in the soulless, banal uniformity of these workplaces. He sought to capture that lingering sadness in what he called "the most common – but closed and secretive – place in the Western world." While the winds of change may have transformed the grey dividers into WeWork couches or the clunky dialup PC into a sleek, pocketable touchscreen tablet, Tunbjörk's images capture a contingent sense of ennui and isolation still prescient in an era of bullshit jobs, quiet quitting and working from home.

This two-volume series is redesigned by Tunbjörk's close collaborator, graphic designer and art director Greger Ulf Nilson. Nilson reworks his original 2001 design of Office, presenting a fresh perspective alongside a separate book of unseen works in LA Office, both housed in a slipcase. The book is published in collaboration with Lars Tunbjörk Foundation.

Lars Tunbjörk (1956–2015) was a celebrated Swedish photographer born in Borås, Sweden. Tunbjörk started as a prominent press photographer in Stockholm, working for The New York Times, Liberation, GEO, Times and he was a member of Galerie and Agence VU’. Tunbjörk published about a dozen books, with notable works including Office (Journal/Max Strom, 2001), Home (Steidl, 2002), and Vinter (Steidl, 2007).

His photographs are held in prestigious collections at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Throughout his career, Tunbjörk received numerous accolades, including Photographer of the Year by Sweden's Pressfotografernas Klubb, First Prize at the World Press Photo, and the 2008 Scanpix Award. Lars Tunbjörk passed away suddenly in 2015. His work continues to inspire and influence the world of photography.

Office: Landscape debsossed hardcover with tip-on, 120pp, 295 x 282 mm
LA Office: Stapled debossed brochure with cloth cover, 32pp, 182 x 282 mm
Housed in a debossed slipcase

Designed by Greger Ulf Nilson
Published in collaboration with the Lars Tunbjörk Foundation
With a text by David Graeber

LJ192, November 2024
ISBN 978-1-912719-61-7

© Loose Joints