STOCKHOLM.- The Left Shore opened at Nationalmuseum on 12 June. This exhibition features a film created by Johan Renck, based on a number of photographs by Anders Petersen. A selection of Petersen’s photographs of closed institutions in Sweden is also on display.

Filmmaker Johan Renck and photographer Anders Petersen join forces in The Left Shore. At the heart of the exhibition is a film created by Johan Renck, based on a selection of photographs by Anders Petersen. The photos are taken from Petersen’s early book projects and his latest, more diary-like and private documentary images. Renck’s film lends new meaning and new significance to Petersen’s photos. The film has a soundtrack featuring new music by Krister Linder. Another part of the exhibition features photographs by Anders Petersen, images that were included in the three books he published in the 1980s and 1990s about people in Swedish care institutions – prisons, mental health care and care for the elderly.

“I’m a huge fan of Anders’s art; the beauty in the dark and sometimes damaged. When I was offered a collaboration with him, I jumped at the chance. My idea was to fictionally construct a “before” or “after” in relation to the frozen moment in time represented by a photograph. It turned out to be a strange journey of madness, close to the characters Anders has captured over the years,” says Johan Renck.

Johan Renck has been working internationally as a director for many years. In the 1990s, he began working on music videos and directed a series of videos featuring world stars such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé and Robbie Williams. Renck received particular attention for his collaboration with David Bowie, which resulted in Bowie’s last two music videos for the songs Blackstar and Lazarus in 2016. In 2008, Renck made his debut as a director of feature films with Downloading Nancy. His latest feature film, Spaceman starring Adam Sandler, premiered in 2024. Renck has also worked on TV series, including directing episodes of The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad. One of his major successes was the series Chernobyl, starring Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson, which depicted the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.

Anders Petersen is internationally recognised as one of the most important, most influential contemporary photographers. Some of his most famous photos were created in the late 1960s. In Hamburg, he took photos of people at the all-night bar Café Lehmitz, and these pictures were published in a book in 1978. This book is now regarded as a groundbreaking work in subjective photography. The photos in the exhibition are based on the three books published in the 1980s and 1990s, a trilogy about closed institutions in Sweden. 1984 saw the publication of his book Fängelse, with text by Leif GW Persson. This was the first book in the trilogy. It was followed by Rågång till kärleken (1991) on care for the elderly and Ingen har sett allt (1995) on mental health care. The texts in the latter two books was by author Göran Odbratt. Since his debut, Petersen’s desire to understand people and come close to them has been a recurring theme in his work. Loyalty and respect for the people he meets and portrays has always been a fundamental aspect.

The Swedish National Portrait Gallery has been part of Nationalmuseum’s collections since the end of the 19th century. The portrait gallery primarily presents the nation’s elite and people in power. Both the collection and its activities have expanded in recent years, with an ambition to accommodate a range of elements of an ever-changing society. At the same time, portrait photography has taken on greater prominence, as highlighted in exhibitions featuring leading photographers such as Denise Grünstein and Christer Strömholm.