Sofia Runarsdotter (SE, b. 1982) is a Swedish photographer and artist with a twenty-year practice in documentary photography and fine art. Her socially-engaged, autobiographical work explores body, identity, violence, class, and the rural north of Sweden. A recipient of the Vera and Gösta Agnekil Scholarship in 2023, Runarsdotter was nominated for the PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant in 2024. She has worked for clients including The New York Times, Dagens Nyheter, and Swedish Public Television.
Girl, Battle is a long-term, socially-engaged project rooted in Runarsdotter’s adolescence as a handball athlete in northern Sweden. Through staged collaborations with young female athletes from the artist’s hometown, the series examines girlhood at the threshold of adulthood – shaped by discipline, intimacy, pressure, and silent violence. Using analogue techniques and bursts of flash, Runarsdotter transforms moments of collision, defence, and devotion into images that echo Baroque and Renaissance paintings. The athletes appear almost monumental, suspended between strength and vulnerability. Installed at scale, the images are experienced like sacred or biblical tableaux, elevating sport into something ritualistic, psychological, and deeply human.
