How sad...

Thank you, Sven, for such lovely images!

Sven was such a fine, unpretentious person also.

Never any manners, he never let his success get to him, and he never spoke unless he had something to say.

I met him because a close friend of mine worked as his assistant on many films in the 1970s, and my friend is the same way: never an unnecessary word. "Just do it!"

My friend learned so much from him that he was accepted into the Swedish equivalent of ASC, and he has done 15 feature films since.

Much inspiration from Nykvist, he truly was a master.

An odd memory:
Herman Hesse's wonderful book "Siddharta" was made into a movie, with cinematography by Sven Nykvist. The book was great, the cinematography was incredible, but I challenge anybody who has seen it to remember what the movie was about.

A bit like Johnny Depp in the original "Pirates of the Caribbean"; he was the only reason I didn't ask for my money back, as his performance was worth the price of the ticket.

Same thing with the cinematography in "Siddharta" which made up for the [maybe impossible] reinterpretation of the book as a movie.

I have been going through Sven Nykvist's Bergman movies on Netflix recently: Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, etc., they really have impact!

I bow my head.

What Ingmar Bergman said about Sven Nykvist in his 1988 autobiography, "The Magic Lantern":

Most of all I miss working with Sven Nykvist, perhaps because we are both utterly captivated by the problems of light, the gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, living, dead, clear, misty, hot, violent, bare, sudden, dark, springlike, falling, straight, slanting, sensual, subdued, limited, poisonous, calming, pale light. Light.

1988? You must have gotten the paperback :-)
I clearly remember reading it in november 1987, in Riga (that's why I remember; I don't go there every year).
Still, those are very good words you are sharing with us all. Thanks.
Tor

No, it's a hardback edition. It was first published in the U.S. in 1988, Viking, NY.