Katja, Lady of Summer
Finishing date: January 2019. Styling and photographed by Natalia Salazar in June 2019.
For a couple, happy years of my life, I was part of a band. Three musically likeminded PhD students making folksy covers of famous songs. My on accordion, Luigi on guitar and me on vocals, with My and Luigi often harmonizing to my melody. Then Luigi graduated and decided to move back to Italy for a postdoc, and that was the end of our story.
Sometime at the peak of our musical collaborations, though, I got it into my head that we needed a uniform for the band. And, because I had just gotten into experimenting with the basic pattern, I decided that Icelandic-style jumpers would make suitably colorful and quirky outfits for a folk-pop trio.
First out was the one I made for myself: An over-sized yellow jumper that reached down to the top of my thighs. And on a partially cloudy June day in 2019, Natalia made the most extravagant flower crown and had me pose among the early summer bloom in the neighborhood where I lived at the time, a student apartment block on the edge of inner city Stockholm.
Luigi, King of Autumn
Finishing date: September 2019. Styling by Natalia Salazar. Photographed by Katja Malmborg in October 2019.
The second band uniform photoshoot was with Luigi. The previous photo, of me, had been so summery, with the flowers and the colors. Now it was autumn and the leaves were so gorgeous. Why not stick with a theme? I became the Lady of Summer. A Sunday when the sun made the leaves glow in red and yellow, Natalia and I made Luigi model for a day as the King of Autumn. Natalia made the crown, and I ran around, climbing trees and kneeling in the fallen leaves to find just the right angle to capture Luigi, and the colors of the woods, and the light, in photographs. Luigi mostly had to stand or sit still for long stretches of time, until Natalia and I had captured all the angles.
It was a lovely day. At least for the two of us behind the camera.
My, Queen of Winter
Finishing date: August 2019. Styling and photographed by Katja Malmborg in March 2020.
The final band uniform photoshoot, My as the Queen of Winter. It was the beginning of March and Natalia woke up with a cold, so she was not able to join. But we had already discussed what the crown should look like, so I was able to execute our shared vision. And the sun was shining and an unexpectedly frozen night had turned the forest a touch frosty, prefect for the theme of the shoot.
With plenty of tea and cookies in our backpacks, we found some wonderfully brown-gray winter vistas among the aspen and oaks to create a delicious contrast to My’s red jumper and emerald crown. And there we had it, three series of portraits of our trio. Three folksy musicians dressed in modern takes on a traditional Nordic jumper. Three sustainability researchers photographed in the forest, accessorized only in things that can be found on the forest floor.
Katja Malmborg 