Caroline Hebbe-Hammarskiold

Caroline Hebbe (3 February 1930 – 2018) was a Swedish art photographer active in the 1950s–1970s and working in a subjective style in affinity with the Fotoform movement. She later became an international curator of Swedish arts, crafts and design.

Career Caroline Hebbe, born 3 February 1930 in Uppsala, Sweden, was a daughter of Per Magnus Hebbe and Brita Hebbe (Benedicks), sister of Agneta Hebbe and half-sister of Marianne Wändell. She had a brief career as a photographer; nevertheless, from 1949, she gained international attention for her ‘subjective’ photography.

After winning some contests she participated in Young Photographers II, where she exhibited nineteen photographs with a mixture of surrealistically inspired motifs, abstract compositions, portraits and documentary imagery, including a black-and-white composition entitled Venini, depicting wire mesh and a twig on an otherwise completely empty beach; an image of a haunting surrealist quality. The exhibition was the starting point for a heated debate in Sweden, as in the rest of Europe, around "the new image”.

Edward Steichen selected work by both Caroline and Hans for The Museum of Modern Art's world-touring The Family of Man exhibition, which was seen by 9 million visitors. In the foreword to the catalogue is portrait of him taken by Caroline Hebbe-Hammarskiöld.

Later life A letter from March 1977 held in the Grace M. Mayer Collection (Curator of Photography 1964-1968 and Curator of the Edward Steichen Archive 1968-1996 at The Museum of Modern Art) of MoMA, was written by Caroline to Edward Steichen and mentions a visit to New York and her divorce from Hans Hammarskiöld. She later married Jacob Palmstierna and in 1983 became the Exhibition Manager for the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design, staging exhibitions both in Sweden and in 29 countries internationally, including Faces of Swedish Design at the I.B.M. Gallery of Science and Art in New York, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in September 1988. She died in 2018 and was buried in Danderyd Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden.

Exhibitions Subjektive Fotografie - Bilder der 50er Jahre, Saarland Museum, Oct 1985 - Nov 1985, Saarbrücken, Germany