This thesis explores three female photo artists who are also professors of photography: Tuija Lindström, Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff and Lotta Antonsson. It analyzes three photographic works of art, one by each artist, using semiotics as a method and with feminist and photo historical theory. As artists and professors of photography, Lindström, von Hausswolff and Antonsson, all three with a clear visual language and purposeful artistry, from the early 1990s to today, have filled an important role in the art of photography. Through their artistry, they have driven the feminist and patriarchal social criticism debate about the role of women forward. The essay demonstrates how the feminist critique of gender roles and the view of women as well as the postmodernism that developed in the art schools and within the photo art scene during the early 1980s and 1990s laid the foundation for these photo artists´artistry and expression.

In revolving around the construction of history, this study rethinks the historical narrative of Tuija Lindström’s professorship at Fotohögskolan in the 1990s. Through this, the aim is to widen the understanding of the role of both the school and the professor’s position within the Swedish photographic field in the postmodern era. The main material consists of archival documents from Fotohögskolan, such as syllabuses, schedules, and staff records. Other important sources include interviews with people connected to the school and articles from newspapers and photographic journals. In order to examine power structures, the theoretical framework is built upon Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the cultural field. To further understand this, critical discourse analysis is also used both as a method and theory. The study shows that the development of Fotohögskolan grew out of many events and endeavours traceable to broader structural struggles within the Swedish field of photography in the 1990s. The changes are shown to be connected to postmodern tendencies which influenced the whole field in a certain direction, and how the school became an important institution to manifest this. Further, the study shows that the professorship played an important role as a central figure for Swedish photography.

This essay examines how family-related violence was depicted in art in Sweden during the 70s, 80s and 90s. A major shift in the views of violence within the family and in relationships occurs during this period, which becomes evident through a change in laws but is also visible in an ongoing social debate. Basing my research on a number of works by female artists, depicting violence, I have analysed ways of interpreting and understanding the violence in these images, in relation to the changed views on family, gender roles and violence. The female perspective on violence is often the same as the perspective of the violated, and I have chosen to study female artists, thus assuming that a changed attitude is most clearly reflected in this group.The artists included in the study are Marie-Louise Ekman, Marja Ruta, Kristina Abelli Elander, Maria Lindberg, Maria Friberg and Monica Larsen Dennis, Helene Billgren, Tuija Lindström, Charlotte Gyllenhammar, Anna-Maria Ekstrand and Annika von Hausswolff.The works are grouped into four categories based on a model created by Gregory H. Stanton, which he developed in the survey of genocide. His model depicts ten stages in which violence slowly increases. My division is in four stages and is named structural violence, embodied acts of violence or abuse, crime victims or traces of crime, and consequences of violence. Seen over the period covered by the study, one can observe an increase in the number of images with violent content. The depictions change from being political messages to becoming more provocative and questioning power structures. This is a development which is happening simultaneously with the breakthrough of postmodern art.The artists have in several works been influenced by or relate to images of violence shown in news media and popular culture, a genre that grows during the 1980s home video epoch. But the art not only interacts with other visual media, it also wants to involve the viewer by exploring and questioning values and hierarchies in society.The girl as a symbol of an innocent victim is represented in several of the works, and the girls are given a much greater freedom of action in the artworks than in reality. A concealed aggression is made visible and in several of the works the girls act violators.Depiction of violence has not been treated as a theme or categorized as a separate genre in the arts. To the extent that I have found analyses of works containing violence in the arts, there has been a hesitative attitude and the images have been perceived as simple in a communicative or interpretive aspect. In my study, I come to another conclusion, Seeing that the processing of violence in the artistic works creates a counter-image to stereotypical and simplified images in media and and so helps us to see the normative values, power imbalances, behaviours and expectations that are often the basis for acts of violence.