It is easy to think of history as something already preserved. What was once important must surely be in a museum. A well-known photograph is catalogued. A painting appears in a book. An illustration rests safely somewhere in an archive.
But it is not that simple.
History is full of images that slowly slip away. Photographs that were never digitised. Posters whose colours have faded. Prints that survive in only a few copies. Illustrations created by people whose names never found their way into the books of art history.
Sometimes the image is still preserved, but in practice invisible. And that is almost the same as having disappeared.
An archive is not the same thing as accessibility
Archives, libraries, and museums do tremendous work in preserving our visual cultural heritage. But the sheer volume of material is difficult to grasp. It may include photographs, illustrations, prints, posters, and documents that are seldom or never shown to a wider audience.
It is a strange thought. A motif may have been created a hundred years ago, survived moves, damp, sunlight, and generations of owners – only to end up digitised in a database that almost no one visits.
There is something sad about that. But also something deeply enticing. Because somewhere in there, the next image you truly connect with may be lying in wait.
The great names are only the beginning
It is, of course, easy to begin with the artists we already know. Carl Larsson, Elsa Beskow, Hilma af Klint and August Strindberg all left behind visual worlds that still feel alive long after they were created.
Works such as Frukost under Stora Björken, Tomtebobarnen, The Ten Largest No. 1 and Strindberg’s The Town are obvious examples of why we continue to return to the great names.
But it would be a shame if history stopped there.
For every well-known name, there are photographers, illustrators, printers, designers, and artists who created remarkable work without themselves becoming part of the larger narrative. Sometimes we know their names. Sometimes there is only a signature in a corner. Sometimes we know almost nothing at all.
That does not make the image any less worth seeing. On the contrary, it is often among the lesser-known works that things become most exciting. There are still discoveries to be made there.
The well-known artists can be the way into the archive. They do not have to be the final destination.
Making accessible without remaking
When an old motif is to become a new print, a delicate balance arises.
The original may be scratched. The paper may have yellowed. A photograph may have dust, creases, or damage. An old reproduction may have lost contrast over time.
Digital technology makes it possible to repair a great deal. But just because something can be altered does not mean it should be.
For us, restoration is therefore not about making a hundred-year-old work perfect. It is about trying to come closer to what was there from the beginning.
Remove a speck of dust that arrived later – yes. Repair a tear that disrupts the motif – often. Smooth out the entire image until it looks newly produced – no.
Old images have a language. The grain in a photograph, the lines from a lithographic printing process, colours that do not look like modern screen tones. Those are precisely the things that make them feel like what they are: historical images.
In a time when new images can be created in seconds
This feels especially relevant right now.
We live in a time when it is possible to create an almost unlimited number of new images. With generative AI, a landscape, a portrait, or an illustration can be created in moments.
It is fascinating technology. But it also changes our relationship to images.
When it becomes easier than ever to create something that has never existed before, it becomes, at least for us, even more interesting to find what has actually already existed.
A photographer stood somewhere with a camera. Someone mixed the pigment. Someone held the pen. Someone saw a landscape, a face, or a room and decided to depict it.
There is a context behind the image. A time, a place, and a person.
That does not mean that old is automatically better than new, or that technological development is somehow negative. But perhaps we need both.
It is easy to keep asking what the next thing is. Sometimes the more interesting question is what we have already forgotten.
There is a cultural service in making things accessible
The word may sound grand. But on a smaller scale, we truly believe there is something of a cultural service in bringing forward images that might otherwise remain unseen and making them accessible again.
Not to replace the museum. Not to lay claim to the works. And not to rewrite history. But to let more people encounter it.
When an old photograph moves from an institutional archive to a wall in someone’s home, something happens to the image. It begins to be used again.
Someone asks where it comes from. Someone searches for the photographer. Someone discovers an artist they had never heard of.
Perhaps it is quite a small thing. But cultural heritage survives, after all, because people continue to care about it.
Respect for the original
That also places demands on us.
As far as possible, we want to know where a motif comes from, who created it, and roughly when. We try to avoid altering the character of the works during restoration, and would rather preserve small peculiarities than polish them away.
When an image needs to be cropped or adapted, the original motif should still remain the point of departure.
It is not an exact science. Two surviving copies of the same hundred-year-old print may look different. Colour may have aged differently depending on paper, light, and storage.
But the ambition is simple:
Do justice to the image. Do not turn it into something it never was.
The unknown may be the most exciting thing we have left
Of course, we will continue to look for works by the great names. There are still images by Hilma af Klint that deserve to be discovered by more people, illustrations by Elsa Beskow that work just as beautifully on a wall today, and Strindberg’s dramatic seas that continue to feel unexpectedly modern.
But some of the motifs we love most were created by people most have never heard of.
That is exactly as it should be.
History was never made up only of its most famous people. And perhaps our walls do not need to be, either.
On Inspiration, we gather motifs from different eras, styles, and creators – those that are well known and those still waiting to be discovered.
Looking back in order to move forward
There is an idea that progress always means leaving something behind. We are not so sure about that.
It is possible to be curious about the future while also being interested in what came before. In fact, the two may well be connected.
When we look at old images, we see what people chose to preserve. How they viewed nature. What their cities looked like. Which forms they found beautiful. How children’s books were illustrated. How a living room was furnished. How a sea could be painted.
We see what has changed. And what, strangely enough, has not changed at all.
That is why we continue searching. In museum collections. In digital archives. In old books and prints. Among photographers we know and photographers whose names have almost disappeared along with their images.
Not to recreate the past. But because there is still so much there worth carrying with us.