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By depicting her models as strong, proud and independent women, Swedish-born photographer Ewa-Mari Johansson changed fashion photography in the early eighties and nineties — both behind and in front of the camera.WORDS: Oskar Hammarkrantz
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When Ewa-Mari Johansson, in the early 1980s, picked up the camera and launched a career as a photographer, she was no stranger to studios, lighting and posing. At the age of 14, she was discovered by no less than Eileen Ford herself. The legendary founder of the Ford Modelling Agency was in the southern parts of Sweden, looking for talents and realizing the tall, blond girl perfectly represented the Scandinavian look. Johansson’s modelling career took off, primarily in Paris and Milan and later in New York. In the 1970s, she was ranked among the top models in the world long before the term supermodel was coined. She frequently could be seen in fashion shoots in magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Marie Claire for several years she was the commercial face for hair colouring brand Clairol.
Behind the camera, you would often find the most important fashion photographers of the time, like David Bailey, Guy Bourdin and Patrick Demarchelier.
“Guy Bourdin was the one who inspired me most when I later became a photographer. He was so creative, always experimenting”, Johansson says. However, it was Frenchman Demarchelier who became pivotal in launching Johansson's career.
After studying art photography at UCLA in Los Angeles and documentary filmmaking at The New School in New York, under mentor Arnold Eagle, Johansson started to look for work as a photographer's assistant. She turned to Demarchelier and asked if she could work for him.
“He just said, ‘it doesn’t look good if I have a young, blond girl carrying my equipment, so it is impossible’. Instead, he told me could use his studio as much as I wanted whenever he was out of town”.
In the Frenchman's studio in New York’s Chelsea district, Johansson built up a portfolio that led her to her first work as a photographer. She showed her work to Xavier Moreau, agent to Helmut Newton, who advised her to leave New York for Milan, where she would find it easier to get work in fashion photography.
“What I’m most proud of is depicting women as strong and independent, as a new approach to fashion photography.”
In Milan, Johansson soon started to photograph for the same kind of magazines she earlier modelled for, like Harper’s Bazaar, Donna, Amica, Elle and Cosmopolitan. At this time, a new generation of top models was at the front end of the lens, with names like Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer, Carla Bruni, Stella Tennant and Karen Elson.
Johansson became a pioneer as one of the first influential female fashion photographers, but also by placing her models in new environments, at the time considered typical male playgrounds, like bars and snooker halls. Johansson also experimented with different development methods in the dark room, like cross-processing from negative to slide film and using infrared film.
“But, in my mind, what is most important and what I’m most proud of is depicting women as strong and independent, as a new approach to fashion photography”.
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Johansson’s photography often includes graphic elements and sometimes even architecture. Her fashion images trace back to the childhood of fashion photography in the early 20th century when predecessors such as George Hoynigen Huene and Louise Dahl Wolfe created neoclassical images, setting new standards for the next decades. Johansson’s images are contemporary and timeless at the same time.
Besides editorial work, Johansson has also created campaigns for designers and brands like John Galliano, Prada, Valentino, Ferrer and Lancetti. She also gained a lot of attention for her series of groundbreaking backstage pictures from fashion weeks in Paris, New York and in Milan, when we, for the first time, could get a glimpse of designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani and their models and how they prepared for the runway shows. She has also ventured into several personal art projects outside the fashion world.
In 2006, Johansson spent weeks in the Morogoro region in Tanzania, living with and photographing Masaai women. The project resulted in the book ”Mama Maasai”. The Tanzanian bush might seem a long way from the catwalks of Paris or Milan, but in many ways, it is the same exploration of the female body and searching for the soul in the expression that Johansson has worked with for more than 40 years.
“The female body has a certain softness, but at the same time, it can be strong and muscular”, says Johansson.
Ewa-Mari Johansson, has held over 40 solo exhibitions all over the world, the debut was at well renowned photo gallery Il Diaframa in Milan in 1992, followed by Fiole Misei in Florence. She has also exhibited her work at places like Museo dell'intreccio, Castel Sardo, Museo Orto Botanico Bergamo, The State Russian Museum, Exhibition Center Rosphoto, S:t Petersburg and Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm.