Sannah Kvist


Sannah Kvist, Swedish freelance photographer. Sannah was inspired by her own experiences from when she moved to a flat in Stockholm. She originally had enough stuff to fill a truck, but left the city with just an IKEA bag with her computer, camera, and a few clothes. She says that people born in the 80s, like the ones in her ‘All I Own’ project, are the first generation of Swedish people who are less well off than their parents. Many people she knows change houses frequently and don’t own property, yet they are commonly described as selfish and materialistic by their elders.



Sannah challenges young adults to pack the entirety of their possessions into one sculptural creation, and she then captures them in her images. The image starts to take shape by having the subject collect all of their furnishings and objects, and then pile them up into a sculpture. The individuals have total freedom to design the the pile of possessions they have.  All of the people who have been photographed were born in the 1980s. Sannah says this was the most important stipulation of the All I Own project, that they were around the same age as her. They would be likely to have the same type of possession, be in the same time in their lives that need certain things, something she shows in her images. These images show that people can cope with little possessions, these images don't show if the individual is happy, but they have learnt how to cope with the things they have.