Anna Rådström

I am docent and lecturer in art history at Södertörn University.

My research spans from the beginning of the 20th century until today. The research is permeated by an interest in photography but also includes moving image and performance as central media. Lately I have also taken an intrest in public art and designed living environments.

In 2005 I defended my doctoral thesis Lee Miller: Photographs from the 1930s (Umeå university). The thesis, which placed itself in the extensive research field of surrealism and photography, gave new angles to both Miller’s biography and practice. The work was based on extensive archival research at The Lee Miller Archives and presented previously unpublished and un-researched material consisting of photographs from Egypt and Romania in the 1930s.

My research since 2005 can generally be divided into three tracks: one is about female artists related to surrealism (e.g. Leonor Fini), another track deals with emotions in contemporary staged photography. The third and main track consists of research on cultural memory production and archives. Here, the studies have dealt with colonial issues, montage as knowledge method and emotions/affects such as intimacy, ambivalence and trauma. In my current research I am interested in cultural memory production in relation to landscape photography and studio portraits made by local photographers in northern Swedish Sápmi 1900–1930. I also explore how cultural memory production through historical and contemporary monuments in Swedish Sápmi is involved when today’s large-scale green transition is presented, recognized and challenged.

I have been part of the previous research network Nordic Network for the History and Aesthetics of Photography and worked in “Challenging Emotions”, a sub-theme within the former faculty-wide research environment Challenging Gender at Umeå University. I have also worked within a long-standing SIDA-funded exchange project between Umeå University and the University of Fine Arts in Hanoi, where I later returned as a guest researcher on several occasions. I have also been a guest researcher at the Academy of Art in Hué, and at Turun yliopisto, Turku.

I am currently active in Art Forest: The Arts for Resilient Futures at Södertörn University. This internal, interdisciplinary research platform is committed to highlighting the role of aesthetic subjects in knowledge development in relation to climate change and challenges in social and environmental conditions.