STOCKHOLM STORIES: Stefan Holm Mardo
26.06.11
At Ode Stockholm, people, places, and moments are at the core of everything we create. For us, the city is a recurring presence. Not as a backdrop, but as a quiet force, shaping atmosphere, memories and mood. Our fragrances and objects are born from memories of life in and around Stockholm — the light, the darkness, the seasons, the streets, and the people who move through them.
In the same way, we believe creativity is shaped by the city one lives in – and return to. That is why we created Stockholm Stories, a series of conversations with creatives across disciplines, exploring how the city influences their work, their process, and how they in turn shape the emotional landscape of Stockholm.
First out is photographer and director Stefan Holm Mardo, a Stockholm original whose visual language has helped define the city’s creative memory.
Set on becoming a doctor or biologist, Stefan found himself drawn early to making things. As a child he was constantly drawing; once he got his first camera, photography quickly became an obsession. Time spent in the school darkroom – watching images slowly emerge – offered a sense of discovery and control that stayed with him.
What began as close-up studies of flora and fauna, gradually expanded into portraiture, reportage, and fashion.
Stockholm in the early 1990s was in transition. Stefan was there, camera in hand. The excess of the 80s gave way to something rawer and more experimental: electronic dance music, underground clubs, new magazines and new attitudes.
Titles like Ultra and Nöjesguiden shaped a generation, while club nights became spaces for reinvention. Through album covers for emerging artists, fashion editorials and club documentation, Stefan captured a city in the process of becoming something else.
After a shorter sejour in Paris, Stefan returned to his hometown, where he expanded his practice to include music videos, and fashion short films for magazines such as Odalïsque.
“I’ve always liked photographing people, catching expressions, moments, something that feels alive. The tools change, but that part stays the same.”
His creative process often begins away from the studio; moving through the city, collecting fragments, feeding what he calls a mental mood board. On set, he leaves room for instinctive detours.
“That’s usually where something new happens.”
Stefan describes his relationship with Stockholm as a familiar love–hate story.
“Like most people here, I need to leave now and then. I like Stockholm in so many ways, but sometimes you have to step away to see it clearly. Travel is often what reactivates my creativity.”
Apart from telling us more about his approach to photography, we also got the opportunity to see him live in action: preparing his upcoming exhibition 1971 – the world when I was six.
Just as his latest project, No Limit, a photo documentary of Stockholm clubland 1992–95, he continues to dig in his past, while adding something new. In this project, he has reimagined a collection of childhood drawings preserved by his father through photography.
“I wanted to reconnect with myself as a child through the heroes of my childhood who play the main role in these expressive old drawings. By translating them into newly taken photographs where I’ve styled a few friends and acquaintances into aged versions of these characters, I give them new life and bring them into the present.
A father himself today, one of his favourite rituals remains playing cards, preferably with the Ode Stockholm leather playing card case 16 C close at hand. A small object, thoughtfully handmade. Much like his work: grounded in memories, shaped by time, and always connected to the city that formed it.
