Through Her Own Lens: Julia Hetta’s Poetic Portrait of Sweden for Louis Vuitton Book Images courtesy of Louis Vuitton In Fashion Eye Sweden, Julia Hetta captures her home country through a deeply personal and painterly lens, using Polaroid film to trace shifting seasons, textures, and light. Created as part of Louis Vuitton’s travel-inspired series, the book unfolds as an accordion-style visual diary. An evocative sequence of landscapes and quiet moments that transform everyday life into something cinematic and poetic. Text Ulrika Lindqvist Ulrika Lindqvist: How did your relationship with photography begin? What first drew you to this medium? Julia Hetta: Well, it really started through my father, who was interested in photography, while I was interested in painting and drawing. Then we had a darkroom in the basement, so little by little I started experimenting with photography instead. UL: That cannot have been very common, having a darkroom in the basement? JH: I actually think it was. This was in the seventies. Back then people had basement living rooms and hobby spaces and so on, so I do not think it was all that unusual at the time. UL: How did this collaboration with Louis Vuitton come about? And what attracted you to the project? JH: I got an inquiry from Patrick Remy, who works on the project, and I immediately felt quite strongly that it was a very fun project, because I had been longing to work on something of my own and just have the camera and be by myself. The condition was that it would be done in Polaroids, so both the technique itself and the project as a whole were exciting to me. I also trust Patrick Remy’s judgment. UL: Had you worked much with the Polaroid format before, and how does it differ from other techniques? JH: Yes, I had. When I was younger I worked a bit with large format Polaroids, and I also did that in this project, partly in the self portraits. But apart from that I had not done it for many, many years. UL: And compared to how you usually photograph, how does the technique and the result differ? JH: It is much more spontaneous, a more spontaneous kind of photography, and that was what I liked and felt I wanted to return to. UL: What did your creative process behind Fashion Eye Sweden look like? Did you work from already existing material, or was everything created specifically for the book? JH: No, it was created specifically for this book, and it began almost like a diary project and also ended that way, because I made the self portraits at the end. But it took me a while to understand what I was going to do, because I felt it was difficult to depict your own country and how to approach that, until one day I realized that this is my life here in Sweden. I had already started doing that a little before the project, but then I developed it further. UL: I think the colors really capture Sweden and the light. JH: Oh, how nice. I think very much about colors and materials and light. Those are the three components that are very important to me in my photography. UL: How did you work with the selection of which images would be included in the book? JH: Editing is a very big part of the job for a photographer, I think. It is something I have trained myself in over the years, and also when I worked as a photo editor when I was twenty, so it is something I am very practiced in, and I think it is an important part of a photographer’s work. I had a large number of Polaroids, maybe a body of material four times as large, which I then edited down. UL: Was an editor involved, or did you make the selection yourself? JH: No, I made the selection myself, but I did discuss it back and forth with the team at Louis Vuitton and with Patrick Remy. UL: What would you say you yourself are trying to express and explore in your photography? JH: In this project, I think I was trying to explore what my perception looks like, what I see, and to be as direct as possible. More broadly, I think my photography is really about that, about somehow lifting up life, elevating life as such in some way. I am also interested in details and materials, and in what beauty is, and also darkness and light. UL: What do you want the viewer to feel when looking at your images and at Fashion Eye Sweden? JH: I hope that I have, in some way, visualized one side of Sweden, and that people abroad who either have a connection to Sweden or are interested in Sweden in some way will get a feeling for the country. Swedes living abroad are one audience, but also people who have recently arrived in Sweden. It feels interesting to present an image of the country to them as well. I also often work in a relatively poetic way, and I want it, in some sense, to be like a story about my life and a country. UL: Where did you take the pictures? Which locations did you use? JH: They are really from northern to southern Sweden, but a large part was done in and around central Sweden, around Uppsala and Stockholm, where I have my country house, but also in Norrland, where we also have a country house with my parents on an isolated island, and some of it was also shot in Skåne. So I think I really tried to stretch across the whole country. That felt right, because Sweden is so large and the landscape is so different from north to south, and I also wanted to capture the different seasons. UL: So how long did it take from when you started photographing for the book until it was finished? JH: Three years. UL: Do you have a project or an image or something within you that you would like to visualize, and if
