The Lord’s Prayer, 1969

Cilla Ericson and Hanns Karlewski

Narrator: The illustrations by Cilla Ericson and Hanns Karlewski for the Lord’s Prayer are based on press images that were more than familiar to the public in 1969.

First, we see the Apollo 11 spacecraft returning to Earth the same year, after the first moon landing. The US expedition planted its flag on the moon, as if to claim the territory. Many people wondered if the moon would now be exploited, as the earth’s resources were running out.

The next image shows Che Guevara’s corpse after he had been captured and executed in Bolivia in 1967. Che Guevara was one of the Marxist revolutionaries who helped Fidel Castro to power in Cuba. He was controversial but became a popular left-wing icon in the fight against colonialism, imperialism and capitalism.

Then comes a bomber of the kind used by the USA in the ongoing war against Vietnam. The curved horizon in the background seems to say that this massive destruction is a global problem. Anti-war protests were held all over the world.

We also see penal labour. This is neither rehabilitation nor correctional treatment, but a system that exploits society’s most vulnerable members. The consecutive images are also about law and order, or rather, the lack of it.One picture shows an execution by electric chair. The debate about this inhumane form of capital punishment was heated.
 
Then we see archbishop Ruben Josefsson surrounded by the riches of the Church, while riots and demonstrations are going on in the streets. The word revolution was in the air in the late 1960s.
 
The pictorial series ends with a nuclear explosion. Ever since the first atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the world lives in the shadow of a constant nuclear threat. The threat remains to this day.