A secondary school in the suburbs of Stockholm. Charles Fréger had visited it years before when he was at agricultural college. His reason for going back there was his interest in the festival of the Italian Santa Lucia. The festival is very popular in Sweden and, on 13 December each year, involves processions of singers in public places such as schools, shopping malls and retirement homes. Young girls dress up in white as St Lucia, wearing crowns of candles. They are accompanied in the procession by ‘Tarna’, who are like pages or bridesmaids (girls who are also dressed in white, with a crown of flowers) and by ‘Tomte’ (wearing red) who look like elves. Everybody drinks a mulled wine called ‘glögg’. For this religiously inspired subject, Fréger used the polyptic form. St Lucia is in the central panel, with the photographs organised in diptychs. The presence of the two musicians references the Music-making angels that figure in Van Eyck’s altarpiece the Adoration of the Mystical Lamb of God. The simplicity of the white habit clashes violently with the everyday town clothes; it is a powerful expression of the mixture of influences to which teenagers’ bodies are subjected.
