• Ingrid Pollard Named 2024 Hasselblad Award Laureate

    Written by Natalia Muntean

    Ingrid Pollard, the renowned British contemporary photographer and artist, was awarded the Hasselblad Prize for 2024, becoming its 44th recipient. Pollard's work revolves around themes of memory, identity, and belonging, often explored through studies of the body, landscapes, migration, and beauty. A key focus of her practice is photography's historical and technical dimensions, particularly its use as an instrument of power and control.

    Her career is marked by an exploration of the intersections between landscape and identity, as well as photography’s role in shaping historical narratives. Her iconic series, Pastoral Interlude (1987), challenges notions of “Englishness” by placing Black bodies within idyllic English countryside settings, exposing the colonial histories embedded in these landscapes. Her more recent works continue to explore themes of migration, representation, and the hidden histories of Britain's imperial past.

    In recognition of her profound impact on photography and art, Pollard received a gold medal, a Hasselblad camera, and SEK 2,000,000. Pollard was celebrated during Hasselblad Award Week in Gothenburg, where she received the prize, held her first solo exhibition in Scandinavia, and enjoyed a concert performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

    Pollard’s ouvre not only reflects on history but also creates space for contemporary conversations about power, identity, and representation, inspiring new generations of artists and thinkers. Her first solo exhibition in Sweden offers audiences a unique opportunity to engage with her thought-provoking exploration of photography’s capacity to reflect, challenge, and transform society. Ingrid Pollard was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1953 and grew up in London. She currently lives and works in Northumberland, northeast England.

    Portrait taken by Emile Holba

  • Swedish Craftsmanship Behind Bernadotte & Kylberg's New Furniture Collection

    Written by Fashion Tales

    The design studio Bernadotte & Kylberg was founded in 2012 by Carl Philip Bernadotte and Oscar Kylberg and has since created designs for leading Swedish and international brands such as Hästens, Skultuna, Gärsnäs, Georg Jensen, Stelton, Zwiesel and many others. The portfolio contains a very multifaceted and wide range of different design objects and projects: from beds, chairs and other furniture, to glass, crockery, vases and candlesticks, glasses and jackets. In recent years, the studio has also worked with destination design, among other things it created the highly acclaimed A Midsummer Night's Dream suite at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, and recently also presented a new hotel collaboration with Eriksberg Hotel & Nature Reserve.

    Bernadotte & Kylberg design philosophy is to create unique and sustainable design with a strong focus on maximum user benefit as well as a high degree of design.The duo sees it as their task to, through new textures, materials and techniques, question how we use and look at an object - and thus create innovative designs that last for generations.Among other things, Bernadotte & Kylberg has been awarded the TableWare International Award of Excellence and the Red Dot Award in the category “High Quality Design” for its Aquatic collection for Stelton and the German Design Gold Award for the Signum collection for Zwiesel. In autumn 2023, the studio launched its own brand Bernadotte & Kylberg, whose first collection consisted of luxurious scarves, scarves and throws in the finest silk and wool. In 2024, the range was expanded with exclusive handcrafted furniture and brass products.
    This autumn, the Swedish design brand Bernadotte & Kylberg is launching an exclusive range of premium furniture. At the same time, the first addition to the new collection The Tulip is introduced, in the form of a tea light holder in the finest brass.All the new products are made in Sweden from carefully selected Swedish materials, in collaboration with some of Sweden's leading craftsmen and producers.

    ”We are very happy about the fantastic reception that our first collection of textile products has received both in the Nordics and internationally,
    says Carl Philip Bernadotte in a press release.”

    For the Eriksberg collection, the duo has drawn inspiration from the timeless beauty of nature that surrounds Eriksberg Hotell & Safari Park in Blekinge, where Bernadotte & Kylberg recently designed all the interiors of Arken, a prestigious, newly opened hotel building in the area.
    To create the new furniture, the duo carefully selected exclusive Swedish materials such as solid oak, brass and bishop diabase – a rare and fascinating rock that was formed during some of the Earth's most dramatic volcanic eruptions between 900 and 1,500 million years ago.
    The collection is carefully designed and produced in Sweden, making each piece of furniture a unique, carefully crafted piece of craftsmanship that is created to last for generations.

    www.bernadottekylberg.com

  • image courtsy of Hasselblad Center

    To the Moon and Back

    Written by Art Editor

    This year’s Book Fair in Sweden is all about space, a perfect backdrop to celebrate some of the most iconic photographs in history—those first steps on the moon. They were all captured with a Hasselblad camera. The camera not only gave us stunning images of the moon, but it also showed us Earth in a way we’d never seen before.

    “The exhibition is a short, four-day event, available during the Book Fair in Gothenburg. Don't miss it if you happen to be there!

    You’ll get to see some historic NASA photos, actual moon cameras, and learn about the fascinating story of Erna and Victor Hasselblad. Plus, we’ve got contemporary photo artists showcasing their own visions of space in all kinds of creative ways. The exhibition dives deep into our ongoing fascination with the moon—its beauty and how it reminds us of our smallness in the vast universe. We’re also shining a light on the historical exclusion of women in astronomy, as well as raising questions about the role of photography and truth during the 1960s space race. There are also works that explore today’s goals of using the moon to monitor Earth. 

    Hasselblad: Then and Now
    The Hasselblad  story all started with Victor Hasselblad’s grandfather, Arvid Viktor Hasselblad, who in 1885 secured the rights to sell George Eastman’s photography products in Sweden—later known as Kodak. Victor Hasselblad took things further, creating the famous Victor Hasselblad AB company with his wife Erna. Both were nature lovers, and Victor was one of Sweden’s first bird photographers. It was this passion and the need for a high-quality, flexible camera that led to the development of the Hasselblad camera in the 1940s—the world’s first medium-format camera with interchangeable parts.”

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