A king face to face with his past

Looking back through old picture albums can be a strangely comforting experience, the photos a reminder of younger days when, as the song says, you really didn't look as bad as you thought you did.  That said, there's always at least one or two snaps that have you cringing and wondering why on earth you thought that outfit/ hairstyle/ oh so wacky pose on the beach was a good idea.  But normally the whole experience is played out in private and the only thing you have to worry about is looking at the clock and realizing you've wasted half an afternoon looking at old photos.  King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden had to do the whole thing in public as he opened an exhibition to mark his 40 years on the throne.  He strolled into the Royal Palace in Stockholm to be confronted with literally hundreds of photos, paintings and representations of his face from the last four decades.

No escaping the wrinkles in this trip down memory lane - a selection of the hundreds of images of King Carl XVI Gustaf in a special jubilee exhibition that opened on September 13th 2013

 

At least when you're a king or queen you do have the luxury of a couple or three oil paintings of you in your youth which takes the edge off things.  After all, if you look a bit dodgy in a painting you just blame the artist and not the choice of clothes/ lack of moisturizer/ amazingly large spot that came from nowehere when you thought you were too old for all that.  Etc.  And there are plenty of portraits of the king in this exhibition, which runs to February 2014.

 

 

Queen Silvia gets a bit more space on her walls for landscapes and kittens as the portraits of a king as a young man head off to the jubilee exhibition.

 

The exhibition opened with a special jubilee fanfare and praise for the king as a unifying figure for Sweden.  And judging by the photos of him with his family afterwards, they picked the best snaps.  Everyone looked rather pleased after the viewing.

 

 

The jolliest bus queue in Stockholm on Friday - the Swedish royals after their tour of the jubilee exhibition