The Buchkunst Berlin gallery presents the exhibition “Dream Baby Dream,” featuring photographs by internationally renowned Swedish photographer Hannah Modigh. The exhibition runs from September 4 to November 15, 2025.
The Buchkunst Berlin Gallery presents the exhibition “Dream Baby Dream,” featuring photographs by internationally renowned Swedish photographer Hannah Modigh. The exhibition runs from September 4 to November 15, 2025.
INVITATION TO THE OPENING RECEPTION Thursday, September 4, 2025, 6–10 p.m. The photographer will be present Artist Talk & Curator’s Tour with Thomas Gust Info: No prior registration required, admission free
The vernissage for the exhibition “Hannah Modigh – Dream Baby Dream” will take place on Thursday, September 4, 2025, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., in the presence of the photographer. We cordially invite you to join us for a conversation with Hannah Modigh and a guided tour led by curator Thomas Gust. Gain personal insights into the works and their backgrounds, and celebrate the opening of the exhibition with us. We look forward to your visit!
Hannah Modigh’s photographs are available as limited edition fine art prints. The artist has been nominated for the Prix Pictet 2025 for her “Hurricane Season” series. Her works are included in collections such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Hannah Modigh has published nine photo books. We are happy to provide you with further information about the available works and assist you in selecting a print. Contact the Buchkunst Berlin gallery by email at info@buchkunst-berlin.de or by phone at +49.30.21802540 to discuss your interests or to schedule a personal appointment.
The images from her first long-term photographic series, “Hillbilly Heroin Honey,” document the difficult upbringing of a group of young people in small towns in the dying coal mining region of the North American Appalachian Mountains. Trapped in a vicious cycle of dependency and hopelessness, the girls and boys live with their dreams.
In the photographs in the series “The Milky Way,” Hannah Modigh photographs the transition from childhood to adolescence, creating quiet, timeless images in which she compares her own memories with the present reality of a new generation. The landscapes and bodies seem stripped bare: every skin is a vulnerable surface, every landscape a sensitive space.
The striking portraits of the “Hurricane Season” series, taken in the slums of New Orleans and southern Louisiana, also point to the strong social ties and influences amidst a centuries-old, still deeply rooted model of racism. At the same time, the portraits point to the lack of access to social privileges such as education and prosperity. Symbolically, the people are waiting for the next storm.
For the recording of her current work, “Searching for Sivagami,” which she completed in 2024, Hannah Modigh returns to South India after thirty years to find Sivagami, her nanny and that of her younger sister. She embarks on a search for the traces of a relationship, seeking Sivagami’s face in other women she meets, and also searching for a reflection of herself. The images created on the journey also contain a silent language of care and connection.
The theme of growing up is evident in almost all of Hannah Modigh’s series. Personal memories and diary entries are a recurring element in the development of her long-term projects, which she photographs exclusively in analogue. In her landscapes and some of her portraits, the artist uses light and weather conditions as filters and abstractions to create painterly moods. Hannah Modigh’s photographs evoke thoughts of moments, events, and places that we find in our memories.
BIO – Hannah Modigh
Hannah Modigh was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1980 and spent her childhood in India and Österlen, Sweden. She studied photography in Copenhagen, at Biskops Arnö, and at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm. Hannah Modigh’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the USA, including at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2012); the Landskrona Photo Festival, Sweden (2013); the Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich (2013); the Sune Jonsson Centrum för Dokumentärfotografi, Umeå, Sweden (2018); DIPE (Dali International Photography Exhibition), Yunnan, China (2019); the Gallery of Photography, Dublin (2020); the House of Culture, Stockholm (2022); Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2023); and Fotografiska Stockholm, Sweden (2025).
Her series have also been honored with the European Photo Exhibition Award in 2011, the Lars Tunbjörk Prize in Sweden in 2017, and the Lennart af Petersen Prize, also in Sweden, in 2018. The artist has been nominated for the prestigious Prix Pictet 2025 for her series “Hurricane Season.”
Her works are featured in collections such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Hannah Modigh has published seven photo books.
ARTIST STATEMENT – Hannah Modigh
My childhood was spent divided between the countryside south of Sweden and in India. In my adult life, I have lived in Paris, Copenhagen and now outside Stockholm. I started photographing when I was thirteen and inherited my mothers camera. Today I use my partly use my father’s Leica camera and my grandfather´s, grandfather´s old camera, the same camera he used to photograph Theodore Rosevelt.
Works with lens-based art based on a socially engaged and personal documentary tradition. In a form long-term projects, book production and exhibitions. I need to, see, feel, to be able to create. Subject and places that has h a personal connection. My mother is an artist and my father an anthropologist which explain a lot of my direction.
Drawn to fine-tuned details that deal with the person’s inner self, and everyday situations where a darkness lingers. Heritage, memory, time are recurring themes. For example “Delta” (2019), is about time seen through and friends, depicts the presence of an absence. “The Milky Way” (2014), about the time between being a child and an adult. The pictures were taken in the same area in the countryside where I lived and started photographing at that particular age. The working method is based on memories and descriptions from old notebooks. A sister project to the work “Searching for Sivagami” which is based on the memories of a woman I knew when I was a child living in India. The book “Searching fort Sivagami” was released November 2024.
I work with medium format, often tripod and analogue. Toned down, pale colors, soft black and white to give the impression of a peaceful, beautiful atmosphere, but if you get close, you sense the pain, that something is not right. Intimacy is important, not in a naked way, but in the feeling of contact. I can relate to those I portray and reflect my own longings. In my exhibitions there have always been three-dimensional installations in the form of water, wooden columns and glass. I see the creation of photo books as a sculpture, where the work is not finished until it becomes a book.
My photography is a research, focusing my eyes and putting pictures on emotions and to reflect myself in others, I coexist a lot with the people I photograph, usually people I never meet before. There is a search for marks that portray the presence of an absence. Tracks in the picture indicate a past event. I like when things happen or have happened outside the image. I see a great importance in the small details, searching subtle movements, facial expressions that bear witness to hidden feelings. Everyday situations that are enshrouded in an awareness of death. I work with natural light and analogue, like the method that comes with it. My goal is to ask questions, not have answers.
