Aspects on Contemporary Photography in the Moderna Museet Collection
The Swedish state purchased the Helmut Gernsheim Duplicate Collection in 1964 and the Helmer Bäckström Photohistorical Collection in the following year with the purpose to create the foundations for a photographic museum in Sweden. The historical background to these purchases is interwoven with that of the powerful pressure groups which came into being during the 1940s and subsequently formed themselves into Fotografiska Museets Vänner (the Friends of Fotografiska Museet). Fotografiska Museet (the Museum of Photography) was set up in 1971 as a separate department within Moderna Museet. For the first time, this made possible the exhibition of photographic images on a continual basis. Fotografiska Museet functioned as an autonomous department within Moderna Museet until 1998. The collection of photography then became an integral part of the collection of Moderna Museet, and the name “Fotografiska Museet” was dropped. That is the history in brief of how photography came to be incorporated within Moderna Museet and of its position at the museum. Tendencies in contemporary photography will be discussed in relation to some recent acquisitions to the collection and how these affect the practices to present photography in a modern art museum. How does the younger generation of photographers use the photo historical tradition and what happened to the legacy of postmodernism?

Anna Tellgren, PhD, has been a curator of photography at Moderna Museet since 2004. She was previously a researcher and teacher at the Department of Art History at Stockholm University. She is on the steering committee for the Nordic Network for the History and Aesthetics of Photography and is Associate Editor of Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History. Tellgren has among other things curated the exhibitions Arbus, Model, Strömholm (2005), Lars Tunbjörk. Winter/Home (2007) and Reality Revisited. Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection (2009). More recently she edited The History Book. On Moderna Museet 1958-2008, published by Steidl in 2008.