To follow a highly visible and prolific artist's production is to partake in the making of a creative persona, which may undergo different metamorphoses over the years, depending upon the kind and degree of mythmaking that particular cultural contexts help formulate. The public image of a young Ingmar Bergman in the emerging Swedish folkhem of the 1940s differs from the critical view of him in the politicized 1960s or the portrait of him as an aging artistic giant in the early 21st century. For just as personalities change and develop over the years, so do the esthetic and cultural interpretations of such personalities. Yet, in the case of Ingmar Bergman, the object himself has helped solidify his image through his own ability to shape his life into a legend.

One expressive aspect of his self-created persona lies in the way Bergman has used, again and again, his own childhood games as an entryway into an imaginary landscape. To the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, a toy projector in the nursery closet harbored features that would become important to him as a screen artist. In his essay from 1954 ‘Det att göra film’, he writes about the lifelong spell of his ‘little rickety projector’and about his sensuous recollection of his first encounter with it: