A young woman's face opens the short film "The left shore" and is also enlarged in Nationalmuseum's exhibition with Anders Petersen's pictures.
A girl from Finland outside Vasa, that's all I know, and when was it? 1990, I think, he says.
A man lying on Folkungagatan in Stockholm, people in Rome, Arvika, and Hamburg but also in prison, on a nursing home and mentally ill in the 1980s and 1990s. Anders Petersen remembers quite well and approximately when his pictures from the late 1960s and onwards were taken.
Black aesthetics
Before his new exhibition, he sent around 800 of them to music video and "Chernobyl" director Johan Renck.
They fit my inner self. I'm drawn to what's a bit dark and worn out, to what's built on emotions, he says.
Both have a black visual aesthetic. With the help of AI technology, Renck has now animated people and dark forests, snowfall and cigarette smoke to new written music by Krister Linder. Together, a dreamlike, sometimes also frightening short film with some of the fragile people that Petersen, sometimes after a long time, came close to with his camera.
I'm very happy to be able to say that Johan has approached them with great sensitivity and intuitively. I like that, says Anders Petersen.
At the same time, Johan Renck wanted to go further than just being true to the original images, he explains.
I love Stefan Jarl, but I didn't want this to be a small black-and-white documentary.
Nightmarish
For over 20 years now, he lives and works in New York, where more and more businesses now have signs with messages like "We welcome immigrants", a kind of bubble compared to the rest of the USA, which he describes as nightmarish.
What's happening is horrific, he says but acknowledges his interest in experiencing it from the inside.
People usually talk about "extinction burst", when something is about to die out it makes a last effort to try to survive, before it explodes and disappears like that. The "white supremacy" that this is based on is so deeply rooted – since the civil war – and many want to go back to that.
Erika Josefsson/TT
Facts: "The left shore"
TT
Shown at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm from June 12 to January 11, 2026. Contains photographs by Anders Petersen from the books he published in the 1980s and 1990s about people in prison, mental care and elderly care. Music video and film director Johan Renck has made the exhibition's short film based on pictures from Anders Petersen's collected work. – Anders' pictures sing the same song, it's clear that it's new motifs and times, but there's nothing in the film that makes it feel like different eras, says Johan Renck.
