Preben Holst: The Stranger

The Stranger is a photographic series that span over nearly two decades. It began when the photographer Preben Holst decided to approach a stranger in a park and asked if he could do a portrait of him. Fascinated by the strength and immediacy of the resulting images, he continued to make portraits of strangers in cities such as Copenhagen, London and Oslo, where he now lives. The young men captured by Holsts analogue camera become testimonies of the subtle and gradual changes that urban masculine identity has undergone since the turn of the millennium. Holst with his sympathetic lens is a master of distilling the essence of his subjects, revealing to us a glimpse of their personalities and inner psychology complete with the longings and insecurities of youth. Preben Holst (b. 1974 in Kristiansand, Norway) is a photographer and artist based in Oslo. He graduated MFA from the Malmö Art Academy in 2009 and was awarded The Hasselblad Foundation Victor Fellowship in 2008. He has exhibited widely in Scandinavia and took part in the inaugural exhibition of the new National Museum, in Oslo 2022. His first monograph Preben Holst: Things That Never Happened (Teknisk Industri), was published in 2011.