When I first saw the pictures by Hannah Modigh I immediately felt close to her world. The feeling was similar to that of meeting an old friend you haven’t seen for years. A friend who is at the same time silent and distant, but somehow intimate. The familiar and naked stillness combined with the hesitant threat hiding all around under the surface. It’s an intuitive and personal approach, where the world isn’t what it is. It seems to me that she is facing her own shadows. The world outside is only a reflection of the world inside, the limits exist only in your mind.

Anders Petersen

Hannah Modigh was born in 1980 in Stockholm but spent large parts of her childhood in India and in Österlen, in the south of Sweden. During her adult life she has lived in P aris and Copenhagen and is now living and working in Stockholm. She has published four books Hillibilly Heroin Honey (Journal, 2010); Sunday Mornin´Comin´Down (Journal, 2012); The Milky Way (Journal, 2014) and Hurricane Season (Max Ström, 2016).

Anders Petersen was born in Solna, Sweden, in 1944. He studied photography under Christer Strömholm. He is widely known for his intimate and personal documentary-style, black-and-white photographs. In 1967 he photographed prostitutes, transvestites, drunks, lovers and drug addicts in Café Lehmitz, a bar in Hamburg. The resulting photobook was first published in 1978. Café Lehmitz has since become regarded as a seminal book in the history of European photography.

Anders Petersen nominated Hannah Modigh for this edition of PHOTOPAPER. It has 16 pages. Images above showing selected pages.