013 - Maja Daniels
© Maja Daniels
Maja Daniels, grew up in Sweden where she developed an early interest in journalism and then photography. in her late teens she upped sticks and moved to Paris, ostensibly to learn French, where she continued her photographic studies at the Paris Photographic Institute, before then taking a degree in Sociology. At the same time she assisted the fashion and portrait photographer Peter Lindbergh who she continued to work with and learn from for several years.
Her work has included in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2011 and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London. She participated in the 2012 Joop Swart Masterclass organised by World Press Photo and she won second prize in the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards. She was also selected as one of the 2012 and 2011 Magenta Foundations Flash Forward Emerging Photographers and shortlisted for the 2010 PhotoVisura Grant for an outstanding personal photography project. Her work has been exhibited internationally.
She talks in the interview about her three main personal projects. The first was Into Oblivion, in which for three years she investigated the politics of ageing in the western world with a focus on care policies for people with Alzheimer’s disease, photographing on a ward for Alzheimer’s patients in a Paris hospital. Her second project, for which she has won numerous prizes and which has been widely published, was Monette and Mady, her ongoing study of inseperable identical Parisian twins who she has been documenting and collaborating with for the past five years. Finally she talks a little about her most personal project, which she is currently working on: River Valley Vernacular, which has taken her back to her native Sweden to document life in a small community - the river valley of the title - where her grandparents come from and where the population speak and are attempting to keep alive the ancient language of Elfdalian, which has strong links to old Norse, the language once spoken by the Vikings.
In Episode 013, Maja discusses:
An early move to Paris
What she learnt assisting Peter Lindbergh
Into Oblivion project
Monette and Mady project
River Vallery Vernacular project
“I think when I was very young I told my mum, ‘you’d better enjoy it because I’m not gonna stick around’. Which is a horrible thing to say to your mum!”
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