A project of love

In February this year I heard a rumor that Stockholms biological museum was closing it’s doors for the public. Knowing that the walls where covered in murals painted by Bruno Liljefors I had to go see it. And as I was there I could feel my heart racing. The absurdity and morbidity of the stuffed animals mixed with the beauty of the building and the paintings combined with the landscapes was something that made the photographer in me know that this was a place I wanted to photograph.

So I contacted a friend of mine who works at Skansen and asked her if she could help me get in and document and photograph the exhibition from the 18th century. She redirected me to the boss of the museum whom I then contacted. I met up with him and he showed me around and told me about how other photographers have been inside the exhibition on the other side of the glas. Something I never thought possible. When I heard this I started envision these great photographs that I could capture.

I told my good friend and I must say very talented stylist Niklas about this and we thought how this would be so incredible and could be our next project of love, something we call these projects that we think could be fun. We then contacted some of our other good friends, an amazing makeup artist named Olle and then Julia whom is a natural beauty that we tend to exploit when it comes to our crazy projects.

Once everyone was on board we started to plan and I continued to dream and these photographs started to take form and evolve even more. Melissa my current intern and I visited the museum multiple times, to just take a look and get a feeling of this magical and crazy place. One day we even put on full body suits and breathing masks to protect ourselves from the dust and arsenic as we headed in to take some test shots to measure the light inside. These photos also turned out pretty great.

Then it was time for D-day, a sunny Friday afternoon with my “team” as I like to call them. We met up at the museum and did our thing, and we created this fun little shoot that all started from a little dream and curiosity. I even got some behind the scenes photos as Melissa documented the shoot for her finals in school and Lasse took some photos for their personal album.

I have to thank the people at the Biological Museum and Skansen for making it possible for me to fulfill a fun dream.