text: Michael J Nordström’s career as a photographer started as a teenage hobby. Everything began when he bought a camera with the money he had earned during the summer holidays. His interest was deepened when he became a photographer’s apprentice. He received a great deal of encouragement, and went on to acquire even more education and practice with other photographers.
  His choice of career was finally determined in 1963, when he got the opportunity to photograph the blues singer Josh White in conjunction with the filming of a TV programme. White liked the pictures so much that he bought them to use for promotion. Michael continued taking press pictures for TV tapings, among them the well-known picture of Swedish singer Lill-Babs together with The Beatles as they visited Sweden to appear on the Drop In show in the autumn of 1963. During the rest of the 1960s he worked for the major weeklies, taking innumerable artist pictures. “I remember when Them with Van Morrison were due to perform at a number of Stockholm youth centres on a New Year’s Eve in the mid-1960s. Van Morrison was pretty headstrong even then – the mood could get quite heated in the dressing room!” Today, the pictures of the young Van Morrison can be found in the Premium Rockshot archives, together with Michael’s many other artist pictures.
  In the early 1970s, Michael J Nordström stopped working as a photographer. With few exceptions, he hasn’t done any professional photographing since then.