Two years after Elisabeth Ohlson's passing, last year's retrospective exhibition from Fabriken Bästekille in Kivik is coming to Stockholm in a revised form.
Curator Maria Patomella has both removed and added works, hoping to deepen the understanding of "one of Sweden's most important photographers."
Elisabeth Ohlson's images reached far beyond the art world and influenced social debate. But at first she was criticized for being too close to an advertising aesthetic.
We are happy to be able to show her full range. She hasn't always been in the fine arts.
The selection was made partly to fit the somewhat smaller premises, but also to tell the whole story, according to Patomella.
I have also thought about visitors who may be only 14, 15 or 16 years old and who don't know who Elisabeth Ohlson was, who weren't there when "Ecce homo" came out.
It was with “Ecce homo” that Elisabeth Ohlson made a splash in 1998 - twelve photographs in which the Christian message of love is portrayed by LGBTQI people. A series of images that changed the entire Swedish photography scene, according to Maria Patomella.
In 1998, it sent shockwaves through the Christian world, and Elisabeth Ohlson received an enormous amount of hate and threats. For a while, she attended her exhibitions wearing a protective vest. But she was a Christian herself, and said she followed the religion's "good" core values, according to Johan Petterson, curator at Fabriken Bästekille.
The series “Jerusalem” is also being shown at Kulturhuset. In it, she confronted prejudices around LGBTQI within all the Abrahamic religions.
Also on show is the photo series "Death", in which she portrayed the deceased, and most recently herself.
It is displayed in a special room, painted white, at the far end of the gallery.
The exhibition at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern in Stockholm will be on display from June 25 to November 8 and includes 230 images and an introductory film.
Elisabeth Ohlson was born in 1961 in Skara and began her career as a newspaper photographer. Her most notable exhibitions were “Ecce homo” in 1998, “In hate we trust” in 2007 and “Jerusalem” in 2010. She also took many portraits, several of which are shown in the exhibition.
She died in October 2024 from complications of cancer.
