“In 1667, a 12-year-old girl, Gertrud Svensdotter, was accused of walking on water in Älvdalen, Sweden. This event marked the beginning of the Swedish witch-hunts, a period of mass hysteria and horror in Älvdalen and its neighbouring regions. The book Gertrud by Maja Daniels uses photography to reconfigure the history and myth of these events, igniting a contemporary dialogue around Gertrud.

Daniels—who has family ties to the town of Älvdalen—grew up hearing her grandmother speak of the stories surrounding Gertrud Svensdotter. The resulting witch trials, now known as ‘Det stora oväsendet’ (the big clamour), claimed the lives of over 300 people across eight years. Centuries later, these events, almost incomprehensible to modern sensibilities, are still viewed as one of the most macabre and dark periods in Sweden’s history.

Most of the photographs in Gertrud were created by Daniels through interventions in the forest. Utilising the landscape, a cast of characters and seemingly talismanic objects, she has drawn upon a surrealist desire to ‘re-enchant the world’. In reaction to the present-day view diminishing the value of forests to mere ‘resources’, her work re-envisions them as once more places of stories, myth, and magic. Interspersed with Daniels’ photographs are those from the archive of Tenn Lars Persson (1878-1938) whose work she also engaged with in her previous book Elf Dalia (Mack 2019). As the book Gertrud unfolds the intertwined sets of photographs disorientate the viewer, unsettling ideas around place and linear time.”

– Courtesy of Maja Daniels & VOID

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When I initially saw and held Gertrud for the first time, I was blown away by how deeply considered every aspect of it is. The cover is incredible, and one of my favorites of any photo book out there. Even the mundane aspects, though, like the colophon, oozes with charm and care. Furthermore, the various types of paper throughout the book are stunning and transform the sequence into a wonderful chapter-esque narrative structure.

With all of those intricate, considered design choices in mind, it makes me think about the images themselves and your photographic practice. So much of the work feels like it’s either in conversation with the archival photographs or operating from some sense of studied history. Was there much room for intuitive image-making, or what was the process like for creating this body of work? 

Wow. Thank you for saying all of those nice things!

The book came together in collaboration with João Linneu and Myrto Steirou at VOID. So they should really get credit for that as well, especially considering some of the design details. 

I came into publishing Gertrud with quite a clear idea and set sequence. However, sometimes, publishers want to get quite involved. João and Myrto work that way, which was new to me. Initially, it made me quite nervous because my idea was already so set, but it all worked out well. Joao and Myrto respectively made a few key suggestions, all for the better, whilst my core idea of the book was really respected and left intact. They just kind of got it, so that was a really lucky strike.

With the cover, I was like, “I want the symbol on the cover.” It was important for me because the symbol connects with the mythology inside the book; it’s the key to the work in a way, so with the symbol on the cover, the book becomes a grimoire and an extension of the exhibition installation.

I wouldn’t have done the design that way myself because I’m not a designer, but my ideas were really enhanced in such a lovely way. It’s so cool to know that you can find people to work with, and together, you make something better. It’s the same with making films. It’s not a one-man band, or a one-man show, even though I sometimes wish it was *laughs* 

But collaborations are incredible; they can amplify the message and make things come together way stronger, and that’s how I feel about all the collaborations connected to the making of this book.

And, I mean, about shooting intuitively… It’s interesting because I’m quite intrigued by the word… by the word intuition.

I tell my students not to use it, or to be aware of how they’re using it, because sometimes intuition can be a protective word. You know, it could be a guise for,  “I’m not going to show you my process… I just did it… I don’t know what I did… or like, I can’t fully take credit for what I did because I don’t really know what I did.”

However, I feel like intuition is some sort of bodily knowledge, or knowledge that exists within the realm of the somatic, but it’s also connected to experience, right?

Like, for example, take a very experienced, elderly driver. Statistically, they’re able to sense risky traffic situations and end up in fewer accidents. In some way, that’s intuition. It’s practice. It’s an embodied, learned practice; that’s how I think of the word intuition.

And for this book, I mean, I think maybe all of the pictures have been made with that in mind. Just kind of going out, practicing presence and seeing what I encounter… But having said that, you know, quite a lot of the material in the book is also still lives, or there are some sort of interventions in the landscape, but they’re not very thought through… They’ve just happened as a result of being open and present in a way.

Sometimes I feel like I go out with my camera and end up somewhere, but I don’t know how I got there. So, it’s more just trusting, or allowing for that kind of bodily knowledge to lead me somewhere. “That” bodily knowledge doesn’t necessarily even have to be my own. You know, it could be tapping into something else, just allowing myself to be led without knowing where I’m going. 

The camera is such a great tool for that to happen. To set yourself up for being open, and then allow yourself to be in that space. I guess I’ve just allowed myself to be driven quite a lot by desire… Like a desire to go to places, a desire to look at things, or a desire to photograph someone.

If I’ve been wanting to photograph someone in particular, maybe I’ve felt like there is some element of Gertrud in that person, then that’s the pull. I think an enormous pull, or urge within this work has been connected to history. You know, to try to connect with the past, through the archive, but also through visiting specific places central to the witch trials, like certain forest pastures, small-scale forest farms, many of which are still standing today.

A big part of making this book was to try to piece together fragments from the past (the little we know) and to allow myself the right to imagine some of the other parts related to the culture that Gertrud grew up in, the culture that provoked the witch hunts, if you like. My aim has been to resurrect it, to keep it, or one version of it, alive.

To think about, what if this culture never got eliminated, what if the witch trials never happened, how would that look? Or, what would happen if that culture merged with today?

I’ve taken it on by pairing my work with Tenn Lars’ archival pictures, with the idea of playing with notions of time, linear time, and breaking boundaries, creating a new sense of reality, and making it come alive. Archival material carries such a strong truth-claim, and I am playing with it in this work. It’s hard to look at those portraits without projecting Gertrud onto them, despite knowing that they were taken 300 years (or in my case 400 years) after she was alive. But that is, I think, the most important aspect of the work: to wish it to life. As I make these pictures, as I kind of set the rules for this narration through the book, it becomes something real, and the reader is allowed to participate in it with me. 

You know, that’s the glory of the indexical aspect of photography, that you point your camera at something and all of a sudden it has importance. This work is about trying to wish it back into life, or back into our consciousness, to think about it again, and to think of the potential that time held, and everything that sadly got diminished, or got eliminated through the process of modernity, Christianity, and Capitalism. My point is not to say that everything was great then, of course not, but when having the privilege of hindsight, especially considering how the role of women changed when moving from that pre-Christian, female-centered culture that we know so little about, just imagine how powerful it could be if we were able to remember a bit more about it and to see how it could influence the way we move forward today; that has been my drive.

So maybe that was my intuitive wish. Which, of course connected to redemption or bringing these women back, wishing these women back into life, making them as powerful as I imagine they were. I mean, they were so powerful that they had to be silenced and their way of life had to disappear…

So, for making images, it’s just like wanting to be in that space as much as possible. It’s just been an urge, really, a bodily urge. I don’t know if intuition encapsulates a lot, at least from the way I perceive it as a word. It could be a subconscious draw to something, or almost an animistic force guiding you, like some form of energy.

I definitely believe in energy, or I believe that the more interested you are in something, the more you’re thinking of something, the more you could potentially tap into it.

Something that feels pretty relevant to this conversation, and I remember you mentioning elsewhere, was that you liked using nature  as “a way of talking about cultural phenomena.” 

Could you begin by expanding on that and sharing your thoughts about the land and its ability to hold onto traumas and be haunted by the past?

Yes, well, firstly, I want to specify that when I speak about nature now, it’s more specifically the forest, because that’s the landscape that I’m primarily dwelling in. It is geographically relevant to where I am, but also to the history that I refer to in my work. It holds cultural significance; it’s not just “the landscape”, it’s where history has played out. 

Also, the oldest living organisms on Earth are trees. I mean, some trees that are still alive today have witnessed events of the witch trials. They have been there all along. So for me, they create an interesting convergence between our notion of time, knowledge, culture, and the landscape. The forest and the forest pastures (the small-scale forest farms relevant to this region) are directly connected to culture through history, and provide space for different timelines to come together.

Generally, I’m not very keen on the divide between nature and culture. This dualistic, Cartesian, enlightened way of thinking that creates divisions between nature and culture, the mind and the body, etc., doesn’t really make any sense to me when it comes to engaging with – or trying to express something related to feelings or lived experience, since my consciousness and physical being in the world are inherently interconnected. 

I believe in a phenomenological, embodied knowledge, a situated knowledge, and art has a way to allow for these divides to be undone.

At times, it can seem like constructs such as science, language, or magic are supposed to intellectually belong in completely different spheres. I disagree and approach it differently. I want to create space for them to coexist together, within the landscape, in the forest.

I find it creatively interesting to express concepts of, say, time by photographing such a slow place like the forest, or to comment on the process of history writing by engaging with archival works. 

It becomes a way to produce a counter-narrative, which is an important strategy in my work. I set up a framework that relates to history with the aim of expanding and critiquing some of what that framework holds. 

For me, it’s a process of undoing. I’m not only taking a stance through this historical framework, I am also creating something new, and I feel like photography becomes such an obvious tool when it comes to doing that; it has this kind of claim and illusion of inherent truth that I love to play with.

Specifically, the archive, too, has this kind of weight of documentation that naturally comes with it, and for me, the whole point is to question that, or to play with it somehow, and to evoke new stories by using these same tools, but to shift how we consider or see them.

As an artist working within the larger photographic movement of folklore-inspired, occult-driven, post-documentarian work, I really appreciate your approach. In your recent book, Gertrud, it feels a lot more explicit in its societal commentary compared to many other contemporary works.

It’s so successful as an eerie book that blurs the line of fact and fiction, and is so easy to get lost in as a purely aesthetic body of work. However, sitting with it, and especially taking in the text at the end, it really harkens back to how the historical events of the Swedish witch trials have so many parallels to current events across the globe.

I think you toe that line really well throughout the work, but to pose more of a question, what is your ultimate goal and intent with the book and your practice at large? 

It very much feels like there’s a dual purpose to create beautiful narratives through photography and book design, and within Gertrud, a focus on exploring an alternative history, which becomes a reminder of our past tragedies amidst so many horrific global events.

Thank you, I am very fond of the text and what it does to the viewing of the work. I mean, it’s tricky because the problem with photography is that you can’t be very specific. You can show something specific, sure, but the context is left for the viewer to imagine.

It’s all about setting a tone, to engage with world-building, to create this framework, or this idea of an environment that can lure you in, or that can evoke things within you so that you activate your own references or memories through a narrative that makes you feel something… 

That’s what photography can do right.

The core of what is expressed in an image lies somewhere in the unseen or in its silent associations. The myth and the photograph thus have a powerful, but also dangerous potential in their trickster way of silently stating the ‘obvious’. What I try to do in this series is to play with these notions by allowing them to join forces, using photography as a tool for mythmaking.

Of course, I also have my own drive or aspiration for making the work, and I find it important to find a balance between being too transparent with that so it disturbs the reader’s own journey, but I also don’t want it to be forgotten. So yeah, I mean, I think about it a lot…

The project of Gertrud is, beyond the book, also connected to a film project I’ve been working on for a number of years, and the text at the end is written by the person with whom I’ve been collaborating on the script.

The text is quite dense, but to me it is instrumental to the reading of the work. I almost think of the book as a conceptual pre-study for the film. And, although I don’t even know if the film is going to happen, it’s a massive project, but it’s yet another step to breathe life into this world.

However, the idea of the book and the film is to be political in the sense that it’s aspiring to create a world, a culture that we want to bring to life. It’s using history as a framework to explore an alternative future.

In Gertrud, I try to resurrect that strong, women-centered culture that the witch trials eliminated. Of course, I use my own imagination to create this world, but the point is to just open up a door and to invite the reader to feel it too, and to join me in the desire and wish to live in it.

The book allows for this culture from the past to come alive in the contemporary world. Today, we’re trying to figure out a way to break loose, break out, or break through to something else, and perhaps traces from the past can inspire other ways of living and being. It’s connected to what Deleuze says: history has all of the lessons. Time and history keep repeating themselves, so by looking at the mechanics of history, we can see into the future.

The forest pastures that I’ve been talking about… They are highly relevant to the history of the witch hunts because it all started there. That is where that strong female-centered culture really took hold. That’s where women had authority, lived independent lives, and learned all about plant medicine, the power of their own voices etc.

But also, today, not only do many of them still remain, but they also represent one of the most ecological ways of life there is. 

They’re a wet dream for preppers, eco-activists, or anybody seeking a self-sufficient lifestyle. They tick all the boxes to host a post-capitalistic way of life, and that’s part of what we’ve been inspired by both for the book and for the film project. To me, these places become a sort of portal not only to the past but also to the future.

I find them so fascinating because they allow us to think about the future without relying only on ideas of how technology is going to save us.

My response is to engage with this culture, to imagine a world where it didn’t get eliminated. And, as part of the knowledge and power that made the church so frightened, to think about it as potential, the potential of a part of nature that we might have lost contact with, like some magical realm.

It’s about questioning and investigating what it was and how we can transfer that knowledge into the now. 

And if that realm could provide a break from capitalism or consumer life, what would that represent or look like? 

You know, it’s like, being and living this vision, it’s not just for the book, it’s actually an ambition that I would love to see happen in real life. I want this culture to be resurrected.

When making this book, the exhibition, and writing the script for a film, imagination is the first step to change. 

When dreaming up these scenarios, when thinking about what a world would contain and how it would come to life. It’s ideological… It’s political… There are a lot of aspects to it, and I’m not saying that they are all present in the book, but through the text, it becomes clear (I hope) that the work is not just an excuse to make pretty pictures. It comes with a statement about the kind of life we want to wish into existence, or the kind of life we try to imagine into existence, and the book is a first step. 

That’s the ultimate goal: to try to remember and to start imagining it back into being.

Even with just the photographs, there is definitely a connection to feminism that comes naturally with work regarding witchcraft. 

However, I love how the text elevates and adds layers of complexity to the book. It tackles so much more than the connections that come so intrinsically with the subject matter.

That first picture in the book, Gertrud, the kind of still life of the vulva? It’s a connection between feminism and the land, and it’s a very simple connection, but it also connects to different kinds of political questions as well. One doesn’t eliminate the other; it’s quite the opposite.

The environmental threat to the forest is so real, especially here in Sweden.

Logging is a serious issue, and it’s primarily actually to make boxes… Boxes so that we can shop online… That’s the reality.

Killing old-growth forests for that.

The Swedish forestry industry is huge, and at the moment, there’s a gap between the generations of trees that make up our forests. Foresting companies are, at a massive scale, just cutting down extremely old-growth forests, and what are they doing with it?

Yeah, they’re making boxes for us to buy stuff online. 

That’s where the forest is going… It’s heartbreaking.

So, what do we do to that kind of oppression? The land is real, and it connects to the oppression of women and of minority peoples. It’s all intertwined, and art is a means to fight against it.

Speaking of world-building, I wanted to know what the connection between Elf Dalia and Gertrud is like from your perspective. Since they both operate from the same archive and explore a similar geographical setting, do you think of them as interwoven or as sister books in any way?

Yeah, they are part one and part two.

It’s the same geographical location, Elf Dalia, the place where my Grandparents are from and where I partly grew up. We have a cabin there, and I feel a strong connection to this place. With the first book (Elf Dalia), I evoked some ideas around language and resistance, which became the springboard sort of to the second book, where I started exploring the notion of myth in relation to photography. 

In Elf Dalia, I was interested in language as a cultural phenomenon; how a language can shape the way we see and experience our surroundings. I wanted to use images to create a world-view related to the language Elfdalian: the closest spoken language that has roots in Old Norse (the language of the Vikings). There is a mystery as to how the language has been preserved and is still spoken. To me, personally, the language has always been associated with mystery since my grandparents spoke it, but due to generational stigma, they did not teach their children and grandchildren this language; instead, they used it to communicate with each other about things my siblings and I were not supposed to know. I still automatically pierce my ears when I hear somebody speak that very soft, kind, and strangely melodic language.

As the very idea of community and nature becomes increasingly abstract, fluid, and complex concepts, in Elf Dalia, I try to engage in a deeper understanding of what community and loss means, and how we navigate our place within it. I was also inspired by a kind of resistance that I personally associate the community of Älvdalen with. Having preserved their own language against all odds – the fact that it is still spoken today perplexes historians and linguists – this resistance is something I also associate with the fact that the Swedish witch-hunts began in this place. So, in Elf Dalia, as I also use local history as an anchor for the world, Gertrud is mentioned in two of the three texts in the book. 

However, as that book came to a close, I realized I couldn’t quite let Gertrud go; I felt like I had just started to tap into something about that specific story, which had to do with history and the processes of myth-making. So, as my inquiry (and the images I was making) shifted from language to myth, I came to realise I had started working on a different book.

It seemed to me that myth and photography have a similar kind of slipperiness, and as an extension, photography can function as a myth-making tool. Like, we point the camera at something and all of a sudden it has a meaning. This becomes a well-known system of a kind of simplified representation (*a visual trope) that we use constantly when documenting our lives, which subsequently becomes the myth of our lives. Like the family album, all of these different kinds of archives, what do they contain? Well, that’s what becomes the myth. It’s dangerous territory, but very interesting. 

So, having begun looking at the way language and archives combined could manipulate the sense of time and produce a single world-view across time and space, I was like, “Oh my God, myth! Now I’m gonna dig deeper.” 

I don’t think that would have happened if Elf Dalia hadn’t come first, you know, it was a process where one thing leads to the next. Elf Dalia had to happen in order for Gertrud to follow. I think there might be another follow-up… Who knows?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Elf Dalia, all of your photographs are in color, and then in Gertrud, you also included black and white work, which initially created a pretty disorienting feeling for me. 

The combination of the two, when paired with the archival images, truly melds together in a way that is difficult to distinguish between which is which, where did that decision come from? Was it in response to thoughts from making Elf Dalia?

That was also a strategy to move from language to myth, so like, to engage with archival works in a different way and to create a different kind of dialogue between color and black and white.

Elf Dalia is constructed in a way that makes it clear “who says what” in the dialogue, the back and forth between Tenn Lars and myself. It’s about the conversation across time and how two seemingly distinct times still can produce one coherent worldview. In Gertrud, however, we create mythology, so the jump between times and who speaks shouldn’t be so obvious. So, that was a very strategically developed shift. 

Gertrud has distinct chapters, and I think of it as having three different strands, or times that could coexist, a bit like in a film. One of them is the black and white work, which goes throughout the book and gets interrupted twice. The first interruption is with the color section made up of images of fire, which is supposed to represent the material idea of fire and the connection it has to history, you know, with the executions, but also to the bonfire, oral history, storytelling and to the spreading of the rumors. It’s also the only part of the book where there are men. I think of time in this section to be fast. 

Then, you have the second interruption, a section with more archival images, where the colors are all a bit weird. I think of it as a slow time; it’s strange, and perhaps a bit timeless. You kind of get lost a bit in that section; it’s like, perhaps something magical happened, and then you’re kind of thrown back out into the more traditional black and white imagery again.

In these sections, some motifs are the same, and you can find them recurring throughout, which was also done to create different versions of stories. It’s like the mythology could be viewed in different ways depending on who tells it.

The main point, though, is that because black and white obviously has this like archival trope, or appears documentarian, I was thinking about how you can play with that, and work with or against it within this kind of concept of myth-making.

I also play into that with jumps between different paper types. I wanted these different sections to feel distinct and to have a different kind of vibe, almost like as if you delve a bit deeper, you begin feeling something different; they’re not supposed to be all in one. I think of the book almost like an experimental film, so it’s almost like they are these weird transitions where you’re like, “Oh, where did I end up? 

I was wondering if you could talk a little about your different thought processes when approaching installation versus the book? 

Both feel so important to your practice, especially with past installations, including sound and video, and with the book Gertrud transitioning between paper types, both modes of experiencing work seem so considered. 

In this instance, what was interesting was that the exhibition installation came before the book, so I wanted the book to have a connection to the installation without being tied to it, and that came through this symbol, this figure, which is on the cover of the book and a core aspect of the installation.

In the exhibition, the symbol almost sets the tone, or the framework, and then I also have video works as part of the exhibition. With the video installation, I’m more thinking of it as a means to expand the idea of myth-making. In filmmaking, it’s all about editing and sequencing, but it’s still about world-building in the same way as I’m thinking of the sequencing of a book. 

Back to this figure, though, I found it in a firehouse, in one of the forest pastures. It’s an inscription that kind of looks a bit diabolical. It’s been picked up and used in a local book that was published in the early 2000s, which talks about local myths or legends. There, they’ve taken the figure and made some sort of assumption that it has to do with the witch trials. There’s no real backing, though; it could be way older, but because it has these “seemingly” diabolical horns, they’ve connected the two. 

For me, I think of this figure quite differently. I think of it as an interesting pre-Christian female leader of some sort of ritual. The figure has clear demarcations for both vagina and breasts, and it wears horns on the head (which, in ancient terms, is an important symbol of deity. The symbol of horns is connected to gods and goddesses, to strength, power, and fertility as well as to nature). It also looks like a shape-shifting figure that’s somehow about to become a bird or something. The figure is also holding a stick in each hand, and it has a pipe in its mouth. With the idea of smoke being present, it makes me think of ritual, and the sticks are perhaps some sort of wands that were commonly used in rituals as well. 

So, when I was looking at this figure, I became really interested in how I could use the exhibition space to take advantage of the fact that visitors would have to enter a space to see the work. I decided to create a ritual of sorts where visitors could participate in changing or loading this figure with a different kind of connotation, different from the diabolic negative perception it had been carrying along from traditional, Christian-inspired interpretations.

So, I made coins with the figure, and in the exhibition, visitors were invited to discover these coins in a black box standing next to the exhibition’s installation centrepiece: a large water well. With its blank surface it refers to the myth about Gertrud but if the visitors choose to make a wish and throw the coin into it, they create a new way of relating to a historically loaded symbol, charging it with wishes and hope which becomes a positive, slightly surreal, performative action that not only recontextualises the figure in a new, more positive light, but also changes the trajectory of its historical association.

The work thus reflects on how pre-Christian beliefs were demonised during the witch trials — while opening space for new, more hopeful interpretations. The act of participating in the ritual of the exhibition continues to build on the world I created when making the work, seeking to use the flexibility of imagination as a provocation in and through time and thus create an alternative interpretation of the established history of the witch-trials and of Gertrud, as well as to illuminate the specific culture of silence and ignorance that these historical events are rooted in. 

Then, the figure also became the cover of the book, which turns the book into a grimoire, so these iterations turn into one another. I have also collected all the coins with wishes and have used them in the scenography of a short film I made, and I am planning to use them for other upcoming work. 

So, the connection between the book and the installation came quite naturally by putting the figure on the cover, as a way to continue its activation. The figure is a mysterious historic relic, an icon in its own right, and I am using it as a framework for the myth I create. I love how much it evokes, in fact I have learned so much about similar historical figures and ancient depictions of goddesses now once the book is out that I am now pretty confident it is a depiction of a goddess of some sort, yet, the connection between the tangible (the existing figure) and us never knowing for sure is, so so thrilling. Makes me want to become an archaeologist!

From the sequencing, something that really resonates with me is the idea of not showing the monster as a method of navigating tension.

You kind of touched on it a bit earlier, like the chapters, but I was wondering what your thoughts are regarding tension, either as a director with the film or in the book.

Yeah, don’t show the monster. When people imagine the monster, it’s way more efficient. 

Like hint at the monster, but don’t show the monster because if you show it, then it’s clearly just one thing, and it’s way scarier if it’s multiple, or all sorts of different possibilities.

I’m quite intrigued by what the back of a person can represent in a photograph, you know, like it activates someone’s own fantasies if they are not shown the full picture, if the face is partly hidden, the viewer is forced to fill in the blanks. It just kind of hints at something, but it doesn’t fully describe, you know? The turned-away figure could be hiding something, but it could also have turned its back to lead us somewhere, to show us the way, maybe further in or something. I’m quite interested in the symbolic multiplicity of that turned-away figure.

Also, in Gertrud, I’m still using portraits, but in this book, the portraits are all about channeling a presence of someone who is not pictured (in a literal sense). So, I am using the presence that portraiture brings to play with the absence of that kind of depiction of Gertrud. In this way, at least to me, Gertrud is depicted in every face of the book, and the multiplicity of faces suggests that her cruel faith could have fallen on any of them, or could fall on any of us. So in a way, as these gazes are multiplied, a part of the myth is made undone. The multitude of possible faces spanning across time from 20th century to today, also become a way to highlight and question the oftentimes taken for granted documentary qualities of archival materials in order to point the finger back onto the construction itself and to highlight what is hiding behind the myth and the tragic destiny of Gertrud, namely a multitude of resilient, norm-breaking women and girls who happened to have grown up in a strong, female-centred culture (with remarkable independence and freedom for its time) that the ruling institutions sought to control and silence through the which-hunts. 

Then, of course, if we are to think of men, the patriarchy, or like Christianity as the monster, that’s already a given. That’s not even part of the story, because that’s what we all know already.

So, for me, this work is about everything but the monster, really. It’s engaging with this specific kind of culture that I’m trying to evoke, bring back into life, or imagine back into life. The act of shaping my own rituals and creating new myths that draw on the elements of already existing ones becomes a way for me to expand on and challenge certain historical constructs and to show how a visual narrative can recreate our relationship with the past, present, and future.

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Maja Daniels (b. 1985) is a Swedish photography-based artist whose work centres on history, memory, and how these notions affect our view of the present. Currently based between London and Gothenburg, her work has been exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Amsterdam and Bilbao. She is the recipient of numerous awards, grants and fellowships and, since 2020, she has held a lecturer position in film at the Institution for Film, Photography and Literary Composition at Gothenburg University (HDK-Valand).

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