Karolina Henke’s empowering portraits

Artist and photographer Karolina Henke ushers traditional cultural institutions into modern times with her bold conceptual art and vision.

WORDS: Oskar Hammarkrantz, PHOTOGRAPHY: Karolina Henke

Mid-1990s. Karolina Henke works as an assistant at an advertising agency in Stockholm, Sweden. Among the sometimes rather obscure work tasks is to take the director’s dog out for a walk every lunchtime. And every day, she takes her camera to the park and takes portraits of the other dogs. She goes back to the agency’s studio, makes prints, and then heads back to the park the next day to convince the dog owners to buy portraits of their beloved pets. A hustle to make the tight salary last longer and an awakening that photography actually could pay the rent. Today, Henke is considered one of Sweden’s most successful photographers with a strong, personal artistic language and a multitude of exhibitions in prestigious museums and galleries. But it all starts on her 18th birthday. Henke spends much of her time making hand-drawn illustrations. Her boyfriend at the time recognises Henke’s talent and artistic eye. However, he thinks photography would suit her more, so he buys her a camera as a birthday gift. A week later, Henke goes to London and takes her first rolls of film. And the photos from the London trip, together with the dog portraits, serves as her portfolio when she applies for photo schools and as an assistant for established photographers.

“I broke all the classical rules for how ‘good’ photography should be, and the teachers didn’t really like that. They wanted me to learn all the rules before I could break them.”

However, Henke is very much an autodidact, learning from experimenting and frequent phone calls to a local camera store whenever she stumbled upon technical problems. “I only stayed in photo school for a semester. I have a solid intuition, for good and for bad. I broke all the classical rules for how ‘good’ photography should be, and the teachers didn’t really like that. They wanted me to learn all the rules before I could break them.” In 1997, Henke packs a small suitcase and moves to New York. No job, no place to live, no friends there, and just a couple of dollars in her purse. She soon befriends a woman working as a photographer’s assistant. Karolina helps her out and does some lighting in the studio. One day, world-famous photographer and artist Andres Serrano calls Henke’s friend. His assistant had just passed away and he needed someone who could help him set up lightning for a shoot. The friend passes the task to Henke, who really needs the dollars the work would bring. That was the start of a two-year long collaboration, working together with the high profile, and often provocative photographer, known, among other things, for his use of bodily fluids in images and provoking religious topics.

“Maybe it’s hard to see what I learned from Andres, by just looking at my images, but he taught me that the boundaries are within yourself. I learned to be independent and self-sufficient,”

In 1999, one of Sweden’s leading fashion magazines contacted Henke, wondering if she was interested in doing a fashion shoot. “I hadn't been home to Sweden for two years, mainly because I couldn’t afford the flight ticket. So, I took the assignment since they paid for the airfare,” Henke says, laughing. Around the same time, Henke got her commercial breakthrough when she was assigned to shoot a campaign for Ikea, as the company was looking to establish a new visual expression. The award-winning campaign for the home furniture company leads to several more for the brand, as well for brands like Nokia and Ericsson and more work for magazines like Wallpaper, Spoon and L’Officiel. Soon Henke also found her way into the most prestigious cultural institutions through well-noticed work for the Royal Opera, The Royal Dramatic Theatre, Cirkus Cirkör and similar. “I danced a lot as a kid, so I like to borrow elements from opera, ballet, etc. My work is very conceptual and I work with a common thread.”

“I was so tired of children always portrayed as happy rascals with some whipped cream on their noses. I wanted to show that a child has the right to be serious, without playing an adult."

In more recent years, Henke has worked extensively on her own artistic projects. In 2013, she created the series Back to Nature, which tells a tale of seven children who broke away from civilization, where she also made all the clothes, costumes and props for the photos. A craftsmanship Henke has developed over the years and which has become increasingly important in her work. Inspired by her childhood summers in her grandmother’s garden, reading books by Elsa Beskow and steeped in the Swedish saga tradition, the series also raises questions about sustainability and the environment, as the setting is in bewitching forest locations. Henke has also gained much attention for her children’s portraits in La Petite Magazine. “I wanted to show children in a more nuanced way. I was so tired of children always portrayed as happy rascals with some whipped cream on their noses. So, I looked at old paintings, like portraits of children of European royal families, where they often were portrayed as small, serious adults. But I wanted to show that a child has the right to be serious, without playing an adult.”

“I don’t want the viewer to fully understand what is real or what is fake. Just that everything is possible.”

Close to her heart is also the long running, and still ongoing, project Empowering Portraits – commissioned tailor-made portraits of children, not vulnerable or bullied. “I want to give the children something, to strengthen their self-esteem. I let them choose their background and clothing so they feel strong and beautiful. I recently got a text message from a mother to one of the kids. Whenever the little girl comes home from school and feels sad or down, she looks at her portrait and says ‘Even if they call me all sorts of things in school, I can see with my own eyes looking at this portrait that I am valuable.” The Empowering Portraits project has taken Henke to Los Angeles, Tokyo, and many more places, but usually she works from her basement studio in central Stockholm. Here, the sewing machine has just as important a place as the camera. Henke works in a collage technique, often putting her models in various settings, and photographed on different occasions. “I don’t want the viewer to fully understand what is real or what is fake. Just that everything is possible.”