Photographing Pride - Stockholm 2019

I was out and covering this year’s Pride Stockholm with some documentary photography on Saturday, 3 August. What a fantastic event ! I don’t think I’ve seen so many people around Stockholm city centre since I don’t know when. I suspect it would talk Sweden winning the World Cup to get even more people out into the city to celebrate.

I started the morning photographing the parade down and around Östermalmstorg in the blistering heat. I got there forty minutes before the parade was due and already then there were very few places to get a clear view. Everywhere around me there were people pushing to get closer to the front, holding mobile phones up in the air, ready to photograph what was going on. Documentary photography takes sharp elbows as you have to be pretty prepared to push your way to where you want to get to in order to make the photo you’re after.

I took plenty of pictures for an hour or so around the city centre until the heat began to get to me; it felt quite claustrophobic and intense what with so many people shouting and laughing. So I decided to walk up to the stadium up on Valhallavägen and photographed the procession as it drew to an end.

These are a few of my favourite photos from the day. It’s funny that although my brief was documentary photography, one of my favourite shots from the whole day was when a very stylish gentleman struck a pose. How typical!