Annika Von Hausswolff is a Swedish photographer. She began studying photography in the early 1990's and has been working in the field since. Although she is not a household name, she has had plenty of exhibits shown in multiple countries.
Annika was taught with film photography and still chooses to use that today. Her work is meant to provoke the mind and to make the audience feel the issues she is trying to address. Many of her portraits include her subjects stripped down to their underwear and placed in unusual positions. The wide range within her work pushes beyond what photography is suppose to be. She has multiple series dedicated to photographing installation pieces she has created. She also has a few series of which she destroys or physically modifies printed images to achieve the result she was looking for.
I was personally originally drawn to her work because of her portraits. All of them seemed to have a very provocative yet innocent feel to them. I was interested in how she included trash, gum, clothes, and glass into the portraits to help deliver her message. I feel like you can actually feel the tension she feels for the subject matter because of how she is photographing it. I also find it interesting that her work interests me so much even though her subjects are normally always positions towards the center of the frame. That usually does not interest me in the least.
The diversity of her work is certainly extreme. I see (or feel!) what you mean about the tension in her work. I looked on her website and noticed that a lot of her work has this feel about it. Some of it, though, is quite serene, with very simple composition and light. I wish she had more artist's statements so I could read about her in depth - I'd especially like to know more about her technical processes. Very cool!
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