Anna Clarén, Hannah Modigh and Ewa Stackelberg
On Being Family
Love and protection – or open wounds and losses. A family can take an infinite number of incarnations and mean completely different things depending on who you ask. In On Being Family, the three photographers Ewa Stackelberg, Anna Clarén and Hannah Modigh turn their lenses on the theme of the family. In their group exhibition at Fotografiska Stockholm opens April 11, these photographers use three entirely different narratives to explore what it means to be family.
Family can be an endless space of love or a place that contracts until no oxygen is left. Above all, it has completely different meanings depending on who you ask. The photographers Ewa Stackelberg, Anna Clarén, and Hannah Modigh have now come together for a new exhibition at Fotografiska, where they explore the concept of family from their own personal perspectives.
“Later in life, you can choose who is included in what you call family, while the first glimpses that we meet in life are the eyes that form us into the humans we become. In this project, we have combined our different photo series to see what dynamic emerges when they interact in the same room. We want to explore the theme of family, perhaps trigger recognition, or simply provide a momentary experience to be in,” says the photographers in a joint statement.
In On Being Family, Modigh, Clarén and Stackelberg view childhood from different perspectives: the sister’s, mother’s and child’s. With their three separate photo series, they ask questions that are as personal as they are universal. Family can be the woman who is your anchor, the person who brushes your hair each morning during childhood but then disappears. To explore this type of loss, Hannah Modigh travelled to India to find this woman, a journey that she describes in Searching for Sivagami. It could also be a child that transforms you as an adult and that forces you to reevaluate what it means to need and be needed, as Anna Clarén describes in her series The Need to Be Needed, which looks at what it is like to be a parent of a child who will always need an adult at their side. Family can be love and protection but also open wounds passed on from one generation to the next, like the intricate fabric of relationships examined by Ewa Stackelberg in Now It’s Beautiful.
"we are given the opportunity to reflect on our own relationships"
“It is so wonderful to open the On Being Family exhibition with three of our sharpest visual storytellers, whose work has inspired generations of photographers in Sweden. Family is a theme that touches us all and through their approach of exploring without moralizing or idealizing, as observers we are given the opportunity to reflect on our own relationships,” says Lisa Hydén, Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Stockholm.
On Being Family will be on exhibit at Fotografiska Stockholm from April 11 to August 31, 2025.
About the photographers
Anna Clarén (born 1972) works in the tradition of personal documentary. Clarén debuted in 2006 with the Holding exhibition, which won the prize for best photography book that year. Over the years, she has had several major photo series that have become books and exhibitions. Human relationships, or the lack thereof, are a recurring theme. Clarén’s photographs are found in such collections as those of the Public Art Agency Sweden and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Anna Clarén is one of the head teachers at Nordens fotoskola, Biskops Arnö, where she has helped train new generations of photographers in Sweden.
Hannah Modigh (born 1980) uses the personal documentary tradition in works that span long periods. Legacy, memory and time are recurring themes in Modigh’s artistry. She has published seven photography books and exhibitions, and her series have won such prizes as Photobook of the Year, European Photo Exhibition Award, and the Lars Tunbjörk Award. She has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, and her works can be found in Moderna Museet’s collection, among others.
Ewa Stackelberg (born 1955) has worked since the early 1980s as a freelancing journalist photographer. She had her breakthrough as an artist with the book Berättelse för levande (Journal), which was awarded the 2001 Swedish Photography Book Prize. Since then, she has developed experimental photography, had many exhibitions and published several photography books, the latest Nu är det vackert(Arena, 2025). Stackelberg’s works are found in such collections as the Public Art Agency Sweden and the Swedish General Art Association (SAK). She has produced public art installations at the New Karolinska Solna University Hospital (NKS) and Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge.