Ann-Sofie Back and the Image(s)
Thursday, February 20, 2025 – 11:00–Friday, May 2, 2025 – 15:00
The internationally renowned Swedish fashion designer Ann-Sofie Back ended her career in 2018, after 19 years at the helm of her eponymous brand. Back’s image as a designer was suddenly caught between the dead and the dusty – it could either be placed in storage and never be looked at again, or become part of a new narrative. She chose the latter. Her recent retrospective Go As You Please (1999-2018) at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm served as a way of burying her life as a designer. Yet as Back’s past collections and archival garments were placed in dozens of mahogany-red open caskets it became evident that this was more of a resurrection.
In tandem with exhibiting her clothing archive at Liljevalchs, Ann-Sofie Back made a significant donation of her private archive of printed matter to International Library of Fashion Research. A car, full of boxes of objects – each like a pixel in organized chaos – traveled from Sweden to Norway. Ranging from sketches to invitations and press clippings, historical correspondence and lookbooks, portfolios and photographs, her archive left the morgue and entered the library to live on.
On this occasion, International Library of Fashion Research presents the exhibition Ann-Sofie Back and the Image(s), showcasing her fashion practice through the lens of photography. A curated selection of Back’s personal archive is on display, an abundance of images, little time capsules and flimsy photographs, altogether making up a life in fashion. The work of Ann-Sofie Back is immortalized through image – the word here used as double entendere. On one hand, it refers to the literal photographic representations of her garments and brands, as well as herself as an individual – published as editorials, campaigns and other visual documentation. On the other hand, it links the conceptual embodiment of identity, myth-making and the construction of a persona – projecting a sense of self. Fashion as image, if you will.
Ann-Sofie Back is often referred to as Sweden’s most influential fashion designer, known for her subversive and thought-provoking fashion that blurs the lines between art and clothing. Her designs challenge conventional boundaries between high fashion and artistic expression, often drawing inspiration from clichés about femininity, shame, and failed glamour. As Back’s archive points out, image-making – whether as photography and as a branded identity – never happens in isolation. From day-to-day imagery, backstage documentation and ephemeral photography, she has worked closely with photographers from the likes of Anders Edström, Timothy Griffiths, Mattias Karlsson, Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Andreas Larsson. Ann-Sofie Back and the Image(s) aims to weave a web of her visual collaborations forming the full image of Ann-Sofie Back altogether.
Curated by guest researcher Marit Talens.
