Hanna Ukura is a Swedish photographer based in Stockholm. We spotted Hanna’s portfolio online and fell in love with her work! Hanna tells us a little bit more about her inspirations and aesthetics.
I photograph a mixture between everyday photography, which is sort of as a journal where you try to keep your eyes busy and never forget to look at things. And then there’s the more thought through projects that develop over time and need more structure and planning. I like the combination of both.
It’s hard to pinpoint why you photograph or why you take the photos in the way you do. But I have a favourite quote from the video-artist Bill Viola which I use as an inspiration:
‘To be sensitive to all frequencies at once, to be overwhelmed and delirious with sensory experience’
I try to look at the world around me with eyes wide open. You see things all the time that are so hauntingly beautiful that it sort of hurts. And instead of losing that image, because you can’t burn it to the inside of your eyelids, I take the camera, which I always carry with me, and capture it. It’s like feeling with your eyes, the same way as you can feel music pierce through your body if it’s good enough.
For my own projects I prefer to work almost exclusively with film cameras. It makes it easier while photographing people because they tend to become very self-aware when being photographed with a digital camera. And it also makes me think one step further before I actually press the button. I always carry my small Mju II or a Canon AE-1 with me. But then I’m forced to work digital when it’s an assignment just to be sure that I actually captured everything, and to be able to deliver the photos on time.
