Nina Andersson Voigt Photography
Nina
Andersson
Voigt
She shoots the same people over and over. Not because it is convenient but because she genuinely wants to. That quality of sustained attention, of returning to someone because they still interest you, is what makes her portraits feel like they were taken by someone who was actually in the room.
"People who I in one way or the other really wanna shoot. Sometimes I find them on Instagram and send an email and ask if I may take their picture. Often I shoot the same people many times."
Tell us about yourself Nina.
I studied at ICP in New York in 1998 and 1999, and worked in 100 different cafes and restaurants, and also worked in a small photo gallery in Soho. I lived in New York City for nine years. I shot my first ever editorial for Index Magazine in 2002, and now I live and work in Stockholm, Sweden, but I'm from Göteborg.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
People I work with — like Asta, Elsa, Carro, Linnea, Jaana. My agent in New York, Simone Lewis, who sadly passed a while ago. She taught me so much and she still inspires me.
Who are your favourite photographers?
To name a few: Roe Ethridge, who is the only photographer I ever assisted in New York — I was not a very good assistant but Roe is great. Juergen Teller. Wolfgang Tillmans. Nan Goldin. And Arvida Byström, who I have also shot many times.
"I was not a very good assistant but Roe is great."
Most memorable shoot so far?
One of the best ever shoots was for Index Magazine. I shot a fashion story with the actress Bijou Phillips in upstate New York. Mel Ottenberg styled it and I had the best time and the story was really cute.
Something you are planning this year?
I hope to be publishing my book that I have been working on for a while now.
Favourite websites, publications, social media?
Instagram!
You shoot a lot of portraits, mostly of women. Who are the people in your pictures?
People who I in one way or the other really wanna shoot. Sometimes I find and meet them on Instagram, for example, and send them an email and ask if I may take their picture. Often I shoot the same people many times.
She was not, by her own admission, a very good assistant. But Roe is great. His practice — moving between commercial and fine art photography with complete ease — is its own form of instruction.
The German photographer who made unposed feel like the only honest approach. His influence runs through a generation of portrait and fashion photographers who understood that the flash and the kitchen and the subject's discomfort were all part of the image.
Who made the case, definitively, that intimacy and rigour are not in opposition. That the people you know are worth looking at as carefully as anything else.
Who showed what it looks like when a photographer refuses to be a stranger to their subjects. The diary as visual form. Presence as the foundation of the whole practice.
Someone Nina has shot many times. The relationship goes both ways, which is exactly the kind of mutual looking that runs through her practice.
Her New York agent, who passed away. She taught me so much and she still inspires me. The kind of influence that does not diminish with time, only deepens.
On what it means to shoot the same person many times
Nina Andersson Voigt spent nine years in New York working in cafes, studying at ICP, assisting Roe Ethridge badly and honestly, and shooting her first editorial for Index Magazine with Bijou Phillips in upstate New York styled by Mel Ottenberg. That is a specific constellation of people and places and moments, and it is exactly the kind of early career formed by genuine proximity to the right things at the right time.
What she brought back to Stockholm, and what runs through all her work now, is a particular quality of wanting. She shoots people she really wants to shoot. She sends emails to strangers she finds on Instagram because she would like to take their picture. She returns to the same people, not because they are convenient but because they still interest her. That refusal to be incurious about her subjects is what gives the portraits their warmth, and what makes her work feel like it belongs to the same lineage as Nan Goldin and Tillmans — not imitative of it, but formed by the same understanding of what a photograph is actually for.
Explore her full practice at ninaanderssonvoigt.com and follow her at @ninaanderssonvoigt.
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