Jan Dahlqvist has always found nakedness fascinating, both bodies and skin, but also nakedness in the meaning of authenticity. During his more than twenty years as a professional photographer he has been in search for the unfeigned, the moment when the model stops acting as a model and becomes real, human.

Jan Dahlqvist was born 1960 in the small city of Kil in the province of Värmland, Sweden. His mother says she only regrets two things; that she did not let him buy a pair of fake breasts then he was only five years old. In stead she bought him his first camera, which turned out to be just as bad. The fake breast incident took place at a toy store. Little Jan, who always had been a nice and well-mannered boy, saw the big rubber tits and fell in love. His mother did not think it was a suitable gift for a five year old, and Jan was not to be comforted. To get him to think of something else, his mother gave him his first camera. If she only had let him have the breasts his interest in feminine charms would not have gotten so strong, his mother thinks. She could not possibly have imagined she had just given him the tool to portray it.

As a small boy Jan Dahlqvist moved with his family from Värmland to Stockholm. Before his fourteenth birthday he went to London by himself to work. He best remembers the visits to the striptease clubs, where the kind dancers gave the sweet young Swedish boy free lap dances.

Coming home and making a wise decision what to study was not easy, since his primary goal in life always was to enjoy it. After studies in philosophy, technical physics and mathematics at the University of Uppsala, and market economy at the Institute of IHM in Stockholm, he went to live in India. In the 1980´s he became a consul for Cameroon, lived in London and worked in Africa for several years. At the same time he took photographs and sold them both to fashion and girlie magazines, and eventually photography prevailed. He returned to Stockholm, and for almost twenty years he lived and worked with the famous Swedish artist Ylva Maria Thompson. Together they made photo projects, magazines and over two hundred TV productions.

Jan Dahlqvist has been photographing fashion, reportages, women, book projects, and also his own exhibition series. Several years in a row he has spent one winter month in Miami to shoot bathing suit and summer fashion.

His interest in art has resulted in an impressive art collection and interesting acquaintances. In 2003 the Swedish publishing house Atlantis made a book of friend Timo Solin, the Finnish sculptor, with photographs by Jan Dahlqvist. Another sculptor that has been working with Jan Dahlqvist is Britt-Ingrid Persson, Bip.

In May 2003 Jan Dahlqvist went to England with Peter Harryson, the famous Swedish actor and TV personality. The trip will soon result in a book about London. Spring 2004 a grand book about potatoes, “Potatis Fest och fakta – störst, bäst, godast” was released, filled with his beautiful photographs of potatoes and food. And in the autumn of 2004 a coffee table book about the fine old gourmet restaurant “Operakällaren” and their chef Werner Vögeli is published. Werner Vögeli was the chef of King Carl XIV Gustaf for more than thirty years. And more books are under production.

Since a couple of years Dahlqvist is also making an erotic photo series of women at hotels all over Europe. The working title is “Famous Hotels”.