“I am curious about the fact that there are some people we just can’t stop looking at,” says Swedish photographer Elsa Hammarén. That fascination is at the heart of Andie, Darling, her ongoing documentation of the life of Andie, the project’s inspiration, over the past two years. 

The pair first met when Andie was 22, at a Midtown hotel room during what was meant to be a one-off shoot. “Her t-shirt, with an American flag motif, was hanging loosely on her body and I could see her bony shoulders through the thin, white cotton. She moved around with such ease, only in her tee and pyjama shorts, already comfortable in my presence,” Hammarén recalls of that first encounter. From there emerged a connection that was the genesis for an intimate account of Andie’s daily life – captured between her Brooklyn apartment and East Village dwellings.

It’s a level of direct documentation that feels rare in a world defined by the ultra-fast capturing, uploading and sharing of images online. For Andie, the project has been a way to define how she wants to be seen. “As a trans girl, I’m not always entirely comfortable with others’ gaze on me – whether it be men with underlying intentions or people’s general curiosity,” she explains. “With Elsa, I feel incredibly seen and understood. She’s not only capturing me, she’s a friend who understands my issues with how I’ve been seen, and seems to want to honour that in how she presents me to the world. It’s definitely galvanised me to honour my own desires of how I’d like to be seen, rather than just fold into whatever other people may want me to be.”

Throughout Andie, Darling, the project engages with the idea of a muse. “The term is used historically, usually a male artist portraying a female, and not uncommonly someone they had a sexual relationship with. This use of the term could feel outdated to many. I am curious about it though, and believe it can be refined in a more collaborative manner but with the same foundation as the word’s origin, an almost obsessive love and inspiration for one person,” Hammarén explains.

This feeling of observation is central to the project. While some shots portray Andie in more staged or referential forms, the majority capture her deep within the mundanities of everyday life – lounging on apartment beds, lost in music, or wandering through the city. It’s these moments that compound in one of Andie’s favourite shots, “I’m sitting on a piano bench talking to her about some composition I had been writing and she shot me mid-sentence. I like how she’s able to capture me in moments like that, where I’m excited about something and full of energy.”

These ordinary intimacies are also captured in the photographs of bedside tables which appear in the project. Their surfaces are often cluttered with pill bottles of estrogen and spironolactone, strawberry melatonin gummies beside a vape, and a flat ginger ale. “I think our personal belongings reveal a lot about ourselves,” shares the photographer as she reveals the stories behind the images. “This poster is from Jesus Christ Superstar, which is a musical Andie loved as a child. There is a wooden box from Venezuela which Andie visited as a kid on a mission with her parents and a Victoria's Secret mist she stole from an old employer she hated to work for, [and] never wore since the smell reminds her of him.”

Alongside these candid moments, some shots are more purposefully referential. The project’s namesake and underlying reference is that of Candy Darling, the actress and icon of trans visibility in 60s and 70s New York. “There’s a playful, more performative space that we also enter together, where we are dreaming. Sometimes we would aim to refer to a specific image such as Peter Hujar’s portrait of Candy Darling on her deathbed. Direct references like that rarely lead to a specific photograph, but rather to a space of playfulness and dreaming,” she explains. Other influences come to light in photographs, such as Andie on Hammarén’s roof in a red coat, referencing Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red. 

While their collaboration began around the camera, their relationship has grown beyond it. Over the course of the project, Hammarén also began noticing changes in herself. “I could notice an envy of assertiveness, admiration. A certain melancholia coming to light, something I perhaps see in Andie or project onto her; it could be both. My own image and identity, desires, how I wish to be or be seen myself – this is something I am still exploring,” she reflects. 

While the project has already culminated in gallery showings and features, Hammarén plans to continue documenting Andie. “I admire photographers who return to or stick with their subjects. I also think of time as a tool in documenting Andie’s external world – seasons, lifestyle shifts, homes, economic situations, haircuts – as much as changes and explorations of our internal world(s).” It’s a practice of observation and intimacy that is already evident in the few years the project has been ongoing. “I imagine the work being a book after ten years of photographing her. A decade feels like a good amount of time.”