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In an ongoing artistic exploration, I have imagined fictional correspondences between Engla Hägertz and other artistic voices from her time. Earlier, such imagined dialogues emerged between Engla Hägertz and Hilma af Klint, and between Engla and the Halmstad Group.

In this text, the focus turns toward a new possible meeting — between Engla Hägertz and Tyra Kleen.

As an artist, I have long been fascinated by how images can carry memory, emotion, and meaning across time. In this exploration, I have repeatedly felt a quiet kinship with Engla Hägertz, my father’s aunt, and Tyra Kleen — two creative women who, in different ways, worked close to the threshold between the visible and the inner world.

One worked from a photographic studio in Halland, letting light shape portraits, flowers, industrial settings and everyday rooms. The other moved between continents and expressed herself through drawing, writing, photography, symbolism, and studies of movement and ritual. Their lives most likely never crossed, yet their ways of seeing the world suggest a possible resonance.

This project is not a historical claim, but a poetic possibility. An imagined correspondence, with a reflective exploration of what might have been shared if two independent women — one working with camera and light, the other with line, symbol, and movement — had found one another along their parallel paths in early twentieth-century Sweden and beyond.

It is also an invitation to reflect on the subtle threads that can connect artistic experience across generations, forms of expression, and different ways of seeing. In these imagined letters, I hear not only echoes of their worlds, but also questions that continue to live in my own creative practice — and perhaps in yours as well.

— Novisali

Parallel Lives, Resonant Visions

Engla Hägertz and Tyra Kleen belonged to different artistic worlds, yet their lives overlapped in ways that invite reflection. One worked from a photographic studio in Halland, shaping portraits, flowers, and fleeting moments through light. The other crossed geographical and artistic boundaries, drawing, writing, and studying the symbolic, spiritual, and ritual dimensions of life.

Engla Hägertz

Engla Hägertz was a photographer and studio owner in Oskarström, Halland. Together with her sister Gudrun, she opened a photographic studio in 1914 and created portraits of local townspeople, families, and everyday life. Alongside this work, she also turned her attention toward flowers, landscapes, and quieter image studies, some of which later became postcards.

Her images often carry a sense of attentive stillness — a gentleness toward what might otherwise pass unnoticed. Light falls softly across faces, hands, and rooms, and the spaces in between are allowed to speak as much as what is visible. In her hands, photography became more than documentation; it became a way of holding presence and allowing the everyday to open toward something more contemplative.

Tyra Kleen

Tyra Kleen was an artist, writer, and traveller whose work moved between symbolism, illustration, spiritual inquiry, and cross-cultural study. She worked in international settings and travelled, among other places, to Paris, Java, Bali, US, Amsterdam and Egypt, where she studied dance, ritual, and bodily expression and exhibited her artwork.

Through books such as En Psykesaga, through her drawings, and through her travel writings, she sought to capture what lies beneath the surface — movement, soulfulness, atmosphere, and transformation. Her lines are often spare yet charged, and the empty space around them becomes part of the expression.

A Possible Nearness

There is no evidence that Engla and Tyra ever met, yet their lives suggest a quiet imaginative nearness. Both lived independently for periods of their lives and shaped their artistic paths on their own terms at a time when such possibilities for women were still limited. Both also seem to have looked beyond the visible toward something more subtle: mood, presence, and the inner life of form.

One worked in stillness with light slowly falling across the motifs of everyday life. The other followed movement, symbols, and cultural expressions across continents. And yet their sensibilities may be imagined to meet in a shared attentiveness — a listening for what has not yet fully taken form.

If They Had Written to One Another

If Engla had written to Tyra, it might have begun with quiet admiration — a letter from Oskarström to a more established artist whose work gave form to what could not easily be expressed. She might have asked how one remains faithful to one’s way of seeing when the surrounding world does not yet have language for it. She might have enclosed a photograph: a sister by the studio door, flowers by a window, a figure half-turned in garden light.

Tyra, in turn, might have replied not with certainty, but with recognition. She might have sent a drawing instead of an explanation — a dancer’s gesture, a branch with unfinished leaves, a symbolic figure at a threshold. Her reply might have affirmed that art does not need to explain all that it knows. Sometimes it is enough to remain attentive, and to trust what quietly wishes to be seen.

Their imagined letters would likely not have been loud or declarative. They would have moved slowly. They would have listened as much as they spoke.

They might have touched on grief, solitude, the discipline of making, travel, memory, and the strange responsibility that comes with working in images. They might have explored how photography can hold what is almost gone, while drawing can suggest what has not yet fully arrived.

And even though one worked with light caught in a lens and the other with lines shaped by hand, their sensibilities could still have met in a shared understanding:

Look closely. Create faithfully. Let stillness speak. Trust what moves beneath the visible.

When Light Travels Quietly

An Imaginary Exchange of Letters between Engla Hägertz and Tyra Kleen

Some exchanges leave no physical traces, yet seem to unfold naturally over time.
Between a photographer shaping stillness and an artist drawing inner journeys, one may imagine letters traveling quietly between Nordic studio light and distant horizons filled with movement.
Their exchange is less about biography and more about attention — how we see, how we remember, how images carry presence.

Spring 1914 — A Room at the Beginning

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

I hope you will forgive a letter from someone you have never met. But sometimes one writes not because of acquaintance, but because of recognition.

My sister and I have just taken over a photographic studio in Oskarström. The house is carved in wood, and the windows gather the sky in a soft, diffused way. When the morning light enters, it moves slowly across the floor, as if first measuring the room before settling.

There is something deeply moving about stepping into a place that has not yet learned its rhythm. The chairs stand slightly apart, the backdrop is still folded, and the walls seem to listen rather than speak.

I enclose a small photograph of my sister and me outside the studio. We sit without pose or intention — simply present before something that is beginning. It is not a finished image, but perhaps beginnings rarely are.

Photography is often described as mechanical, yet I increasingly experience it as a form of listening.
Each portrait becomes a meeting between two silences — the sitter’s and my own. Somewhere between them something arises that neither of us planned.

I have read your En Psykesaga and often return to its inward tone. You wrote about paths that appear only as one walks them. This studio feels like such a path — one that must slowly unfold through attention rather than certainty.

Do you think the rooms we work in shape what we see? Or do we gradually shape them through the way we notice?

With quiet admiration,
Engla Hägertz
(Oskarström, 1914)

Tyra replies

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me in my studio in Rome, where the light falls differently than in the north. Here the day moves quickly between the sharp streaks of the skylights, but when I read your words about the quiet morning light in Oskarström, I felt an unexpected recognition. There is something universal about rooms not yet filled with work — they carry an openness that is almost spiritual.

The photograph you enclosed of you and your sister holds this quality. You stand not as subjects but as participants in a moment just taking shape. I especially like how the light falls gently without dominating — it gives the image a tone of waiting.

You write that photography is listening. I recognize this in drawing. When I work with line, I try not to describe the world, but rather to follow a movement already present. In working on En Psykesaga, I often felt that the images arose as if they already existed in the room.

I enclose a small drawing: a window with silhouettes. I wanted to capture the moment when something is just about to reveal itself. Perhaps it is in such moments that our works meet — in what is not yet fully visible.

May your studio slowly fill with presence. And may the light continue to arrive gently.

Warmly,
Tyra Kleen
(Rome, 1914)

Autumn 1917 — What Remains

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

I write to you in a quieter tone than before. My sister Gudrun is no longer here.

The studio remains, but the rhythm has changed in ways I had not expected.
There are moments when I instinctively turn to speak, only to meet silence.
But this silence is not empty — it carries memory.

I recently developed an older glass plate taken in the garden behind the studio. I stand half turned, as if about to say something to Gudrun. The light touches Gudrun’s white dress, while the rest dissolves softly. It feels less like a portrait and more like an opening.

I enclose a small contact print of the image. Not for likeness, but for the mood it carries.
It reminds me that presence does not disappear; it changes form.

Photography now feels less like capturing a moment and more like holding something fragile that continues beyond the frame.

You have often worked with symbols and inner journeys. Do you think drawing allows memory to move differently than photography? Perhaps drawing breathes, while photography lingers.

With quiet trust,
Engla Hägertz
(Oskarström, 1917)

Tyra replies from New York

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me after a long journey across the Atlantic, and I still carry it with me.

I now write from New York, where movement is constant and the sounds almost never cease.
Yet in the midst of this speed, I paused when I read about Gudrun.

I am deeply moved by your loss. When someone who has stood so close is suddenly missing, not only life changes, but also one’s gaze. What was once obvious becomes quiet, and in this silence, things appear that one did not previously see.

The photograph you describe — Gudrun in the garden, half turned — feels like an image that does not conclude but continues. It is as if the movement still remains, and perhaps it is there that memory lives most strongly.

During the crossing of the Atlantic, I often thought about how the sea carries both presence and absence. Waves come and disappear without trace, yet the rhythm remains within the one who watches.

Perhaps grief is similar — not something that disappears, but something that changes how one perceives the light.

I enclose a small drawing I made during the journey. A branch with two leaves — one clear, the other only suggested — surrounding a sunflower girl. I deliberately left it unfinished, for sometimes the incomplete allows what is missing to continue breathing.

You write that photography now feels like holding something fragile. I believe you have found a deeper part of your work. It is no longer only the presence of the moment, but what remains afterward.

Here in the city, the light is harsher than at home, but when I think of your studio, I see a soft light falling across the floor. I imagine it now carrying both you and Gudrun, as if the room remembers you both.

May stillness continue to follow your work, and may memory become a gentle companion.

Warmly,
Tyra Kleen
(New York, 1917)

1920 — Movement and Stillness

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

Summer has brought a light that changes from day to day. Sometimes it is clear and open, sometimes softened as if through a thin veil. I have begun leaving the studio more often to seek this shifting light, yet I always return with the feeling that the quiet room still follows me.

Recently I traveled to the coast. The sea lay almost silver, and the wind moved the grass in slow waves. I tried to photograph not the landscape itself, but the feeling that arose between movement and stillness. It was as if time both moved and stood still at once.

I enclose a photograph from that day. In the foreground the stone becomes a staircase, while the horizon behind remains calm. I also asked a model to carry an oriental parasol, inspired by your stories from your travels. It gave the image another tone, almost like a meeting between places.

When I work, I notice that I increasingly leave space in the image. What is not filled becomes as important as what is seen. Perhaps this is an influence from your drawings, where the line is often surrounded by silence.

I wonder how the movement you encounter where you are affects your way of seeing. Here the landscape moves slowly, almost imperceptibly. Perhaps it is different for you, where gestures and ceremonies carry greater dynamism.

Sometimes I think photography tries to hold a moment, while drawing perhaps follows it further. Yet they seem to meet in attention — the quiet listening before the image itself.

With warm greetings,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1920)

Tyra replies (from Java)

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me in Batavia here in Java, where the air is heavy with warmth and movement. Everything here seems to carry a rhythm that is both slow and alive, as if time itself breathes differently.

I read your description of the coast with strong recognition, despite the distance between us. You write about grass leaning in the wind while the horizon remains still. Here I see the same meeting between movement and rest, but in the gesture of the human body.

I have spent many hours studying dancers in the temples. Their hands move in precise forms, but between each movement a stillness arises that is almost more important than the gesture itself. It is in this interval that I try to draw.

Your photograph, with the model and the oriental parasol, brought me closer to home than you might imagine. There is something in how you let the light rest around the form that reminds me of how the dancers move through space. The exterior is simple, yet the atmosphere carries something larger.

I enclose a small sketch made during a temple dance. The lines are quick, almost fleeting, for I did not want to capture the movement, but follow it. I left the arms incomplete, so the gesture can continue beyond the paper.

Here the light is different from home. It falls directly and creates sharp shadows, yet within the shadow there is a deep stillness. I believe this is what unites our works — not form, but attention.

You hold movement in stillness through photography. I seek stillness in movement through drawing.
Perhaps they are two paths toward the same center.

When evenings come and the sounds soften, I sometimes think of the Nordic horizons.
There is something in their silence that continues to live even here.

With warm greetings from Java,
Tyra
(Batavia, Java, 1920)

1924 — Images That Travel

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

Autumn has arrived quietly this year. The light falls lower across the fields, and in the studio the afternoons grow longer and softer. It is a time when I like to work with small arrangements — things that require little, yet still hold an entire atmosphere.

During a recent birthday gathering, some flowers remained on the table after the guests had left. They were not particularly arranged, rather left as they happened to be. But when the light fell through the window, something emerged that felt worth preserving. I took a photograph and let it remain simple, without moving anything.

I enclose this image for you. The flowers stand near the window, and the light fades gently toward the edges. There is something in such moments that feels more like an echo than an instant.

Recently I have allowed some of my flower photographs to be printed as postcards. At first it felt unfamiliar to let the images leave their place and travel onward. I wondered whether the stillness would be lost when repeated. But perhaps it is the opposite — that the image gains a new life in each hand that holds it.

I sometimes think of how your drawings, which move between different places and exhibitions, also change in meeting new viewers. It is as if each gaze adds something, without altering the core.

I also notice that I now leave more space in my images. What is not filled speaks almost as clearly as what is seen. Perhaps this is something that comes with time — a wish to let simplicity carry more.

I wonder how your works are experienced where you are. Do people see the movement in your lines, or do they rest in the stillness between them? It is curious how different paths can lead to the same attention.

With quiet greetings from the studio,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1924)

Tyra replies

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me here on Lidingö, where I remain for a time before continuing my journey southward. Everything is quiet here, yet within me there is already a movement, as if something is loosening and seeking its way toward another light.

I was especially touched by your photograph from the birthday. The flowers seem not arranged, but rather gathered in the light by themselves. There is something gentle in how you allow the edges to fade, as if the image does not wish to end, but continue in the viewer’s thought.

You ask whether images change as they travel. I believe they do, but not by losing their core. Rather, they gather new layers, as if each gaze leaves a trace. Here I see my drawings in reproductions, and sometimes I experience them as softer, almost more memory-like than the originals.

I enclose a reproduction of one of my dancer sketches from Java. When the lines are printed on paper, their weight changes, yet the movement remains. Perhaps this is what allows images to travel — they carry their silence with them.

Your flowers, sent as postcards, allow stillness to spread from hand to hand. My drawings, hung in exhibition rooms, attempt to bring movement into the same quiet space.

It strikes me that our works move in opposite directions, yet meet at the same point. You allow the everyday to open toward something larger, and I try to let the unfamiliar become still enough to feel close.

As I walk along the water here in the evening light, I think of how water reflects the sky without holding it. Soon, other waters will meet me, other skies be reflected. Perhaps our images function in the same way — they reflect, but do not bind.

With warm greetings,
Tyra
(Amsterdam, 1924) 

1926 — Light and Distance

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

I have heard that you have traveled south again, to a landscape I know only through stories and images. I imagine a light different from ours — clearer, more direct, yet perhaps also quieter. It is curious how one can sense a place through the way one imagines its light.

Here in the studio, the days have grown calmer. I often work with small arrangements, almost unnoticed. A chair, a few flowers, a window letting in the afternoon. It is as if the simple motifs hold more the longer one stays with them.

I enclose a photograph from such a moment. The flowers stand on a table near the window, and the light falls diagonally across them. The shadows are soft and almost transparent. It felt as if time rested there for a while.

I have begun thinking about how places carry different forms of stillness. Ours is gentle and muted, but I wonder if the stillness of the desert is different — perhaps larger, more open.

When I look at your earlier drawings from travels, they often seem to leave much space around the form. It is as if the empty space is as important as the line. I recognize something of this in photography — what is not filled, yet still speaks.

Sometimes I think that work changes with the years. One searches less for the unusual and more for what already exists, but needs to be noticed.

I wonder how the light in Egypt affects your gaze. Do you see forms more clearly there, or does the empty space grow larger?

With quiet greetings from the studio,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1926)

Tyra replies (from Luxor, Egypt)

Dear Engla,

Your letter reached me in Luxor, where the light falls differently than anywhere else I have been. It is almost white at midday, and the shadows become sharp as drawn lines across the sand. Here the landscape feels both still and infinite, as if time itself has come to rest.

I read your description of the still life in your studio with great reflection. The flowers and chair in your photograph seem to rest in a light that does not hurry, and it reminded me of the temples I have walked through here. Despite their weight and age, they carry a curious lightness, as if each stone is still listening.

I have spent several mornings by the Nile. The water moves slowly, almost imperceptibly, and yet everything nearby changes. It made me think of your images — how they hold stillness, while allowing time to pass through them.

I enclose a drawing made at dawn. A simple horizon line across the desert, and a small bird just lifting. I left large parts of the paper empty, to allow space itself to become part of the image.

Here the colors are few, but the nuances many. The light of the sand changes from hour to hour, and in this restraint there is a stillness that I experience as related to your work. You find it in flowers and rooms; I find it in stone and sky.

When the sun sets behind the mountains, the air becomes cool and quiet. It is then I feel most clearly how travel is not only about moving through space, but about slowly changing one’s gaze. Your photographs seem to do something similar, without leaving their place.

With warm greetings from the banks of the Nile,
Tyra
(Luxor, Egypt, 1926)

Later in Life — Light After Sunset

Engla writes

Dear Tyra,

The days have grown quieter here. The light moves more slowly across the floor — or perhaps it is I who have learned to follow it more carefully. I no longer work as much, yet I often step into the studio anyway, as if to listen.

I have begun placing older photographs on the table, without arranging them. They seem to speak to one another in ways I had not previously noticed. A portrait beside a flower, a hand beside a window, a shadow beside a gaze. It feels less like a collection of images and more like a conversation that has been ongoing for a long time.

Recently I took a photograph in the studio, but this time I turned the camera toward myself. The large wooden construction stands as a quiet frame, and my hands rest upon it, as if still listening for the next image.

It was not planned as a self-portrait. I simply sat for a moment behind the camera and let the shutter fall.

When I later saw the image, it struck me how curious it is to stand both behind and in front of one’s own work. The camera that for so long had been my way of meeting others suddenly became a mirror of the life that had passed through it.

It felt as if time gathered in the image — not in movement, but in a quiet presence where both the work and the person behind it could rest together.

I enclose this photograph for you. Not as a conclusion, but as a quiet greeting. It holds both what has been and what still is.

When I think of your travels — Paris, Java, Egypt, and now Lidingö — it strikes me that our paths have been different, yet the attention the same. You have sought it in movement and symbol; I in light and everyday life.

I believe work changes with the years. One no longer tries to hold the moment, but rather to let it rest. There is a gentleness in what comes with time.

Perhaps this is what I have learned most: that it is not always the clear that remains, but what almost disappears.

With quiet greetings,
Engla
(Oskarström, 1947)

Later in Life — Tyra writes from Lidingö

Dear Engla,

Your latest letter reached me here on Lidingö, where the days have grown slower and the light changes almost imperceptibly from hour to hour. I work less now, but perhaps I listen more. It feels as though time no longer moves forward, but rather spreads outward.

The photograph you enclosed — your image from the studio — stayed with me for a long time. It carries both presence and distance, as if you stand simultaneously within the room and outside it. I think this is how we experience our own lives toward the end — not as a line, but as layers.

I have gone through older drawings. They seem simpler now than when I made them, yet perhaps simplicity was what I sought without knowing it. The forms have become fewer, and the empty space larger.

I enclose an image from my home. I sit at the table, and the flowers stand between the room and the light. Behind me hangs a painting whose surface captures reflections that change with the day.

It is not a dramatic motif — only a quiet presence. I wanted to let the everyday carry what otherwise easily disappears: the light across the wall, the silence of the flowers, the time resting in the room. Most of the image remains untouched, without movement. Precisely for that reason, it felt as though stillness itself became part of the composition.

When I look back at our letters, I think they were never truly about places, even though we wrote from many. They were about attention — about holding what almost disappears.

You have done this through the light in your photographs. I have tried through line. And somewhere they meet.

I do not believe the work disappears when we leave it. It continues as a quiet resonance — in someone who pauses, in someone who sees a little more slowly. That is enough.

With warm greetings,
Tyra
(Villa Brevik, Lidingö, 1947)

Prelude

Some letters are never written, yet their echoes remain.
They arise in the quiet spaces between images, in the pause before a line is drawn, in the soft light that settles across a studio floor. What is never sent may still travel — carried not by envelopes, but by attention, memory, and a shared sensitivity to the world.

Between photography and drawing, between Oskarström and Lidingö, a quiet conversation continues. It moves across years and landscapes — from northern studio windows to distant horizons, from the stillness of arranged flowers to the gesture of a hand in motion. Each image becomes a letter of its own, each line and shadow a response.

What binds them is not proximity, but presence. A way of seeing that lingers. A willingness to notice what almost disappears. In this silent exchange, light becomes language, and time becomes a gentle messenger.

And so the dialogue endures — not in words alone, but in the spaces between them — where light travels quietly through time.

References

About Engla Hägertz

Hägertz Glass Plates at Oskarströms Hembygdsförening

Tyra Kleen at Svenskt Kvinnobiografiskt Lexikon

Välinege Gard About Tyra Kleen 

Masteruppsats om Tyra Kleen

Book about Tyra Kleen

Exhibitions

Tyra Kleen – Always Searching at Hallands Konsmuseum

Related Blogposts

Earlier Blogposts with imaginary Letter Exchanges and artifacts

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com.

The post An Imagined Exchange, a Quiet Kinship first appeared on Novisali.

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What happens in what was never said? What might have emerged, had their worlds—of camera and brush, of everyday life and dreams—truly met?

This project imagines a conversation that was never documented but might well have taken place. Through fictional letters, we follow an imagined correspondence between Engla Hägertz, photographer in Oskarström, and members of the Halmstad Group—six young artists with roots in the same Halland soil but with visions reaching far beyond the horizon.

Two visual realms, one shared light 

The Halmstad Group—consisting of Erik Olson, Axel Olson, Waldemar Lorentzon, Esaias Thorén, Sven Jonson, and Stellan Mörner—became known for their dreamlike, surrealist, and often geometrically structured paintings. Drawing inspiration from Parisian modernism and the symbolic language of the subconscious, they created art that both provoked and puzzled.

Engla Hägertz worked simultaneously, though in a different sphere. As a female photographer in an industrial town, she captured portraits, landscapes, and everyday moments with equal parts precision and intuition. Her photographs carry both documentary value and poetic presence—especially in her later works, where shadows, reflections, and in-between spaces are allowed to speak.

If they had met 

Perhaps they glimpsed one another’s images—in storefronts, studios, or fleeting thoughts. Perhaps one of the artists saw her photographs in Oskarström and felt a quiet kinship. Perhaps Engla heard about their exhibitions in Halmstad or Gothenburg—and wondered what lay behind their dreamlike forms.

In these letters, they finally meet. In thought, in image, in the spaces between two modes of expression. The words exchanged are gentle, sometimes cryptic, sometimes precise—but always rooted in a shared search for what lies beneath the surface.

It is a poetic experiment. An artistic what-if. An invitation to listen into the silence that sometimes arises—just where the image ends, and something new begins.

Engla in Other Conversations 

This is not the only imagined correspondence centered on Engla Hägertz. In a parallel artistic project—“When Quiet Visionaries Speak”—a similar poetic correspondence unfolds between Engla and the artist Hilma af Klint. There, the dialogue moves within the spiritual and intuitive, between symbols, visions, and stillness.

Here—in dialogue with the Halmstad Group—the focus is instead on Halland’s soil, the shadows of the body, and the forms of art.

— Novisali

Letters between Engla Hägertz and members of Halmstadgruppen

Axel Olson → Engla Hägertz

Halmstad, October 1916
Dear Miss Hägertz,

My fingers are stained with graphite—shadows left from a long day of silent experimentation.

Erik and I saw your portraits from Oskarström. The woman in the cook’s cap, in front of the medallion wallpaper. That gaze—as if she’d been painted by the innermost longing of light.

We call ourselves The Spark. An attempt to paint what we can only sense.

Would you consider lending us an image? One that doesn’t just show—but thinks.

In shifting shadows,
Axel

P.S. I’m enclosing a sketch: a fisherman hanging his nets, and an image of a work with an anchor and rope. Small things that linger in the hand.

Engla Hägertz → Axel Olson

Oskarström, November 1916
Mr. Olson,

Your letter stirred something quiet in me. My images are silent—but sometimes they whisper to those who listen with the soul.

I’m sending a photograph of a child’s chair, double-exposed with two faces. It’s from Oskarström, but could be a memory from anywhere.

Let your spark burn not high—but deep.

With gentle stillness,
Engla

Waldemar Lorentzon → Engla Hägertz

Snöstorp, April 1918
Mrs. Hägertz,

The chair you sent has haunted me. I dreamt it toppled under a sky full of stars.

Lately, I paint only forms: pears, circles, ladders. But the way you make a room breathe won’t leave me.

Have you ever photographed through a mirror? I tried today—but the mirror only showed myself.

/ Walle

P.S. A drawing of myself enclosed, and a photo of a piece: mirror, autumn leaves, dreams.

Engla Hägertz → Waldemar Lorentzon

Oskarström, June 1918
Dear Waldemar,

Mirrors often lie. But sometimes they show exactly what we’re fleeing from.

I have a glass plate where my face is faintly visible—overexposed, nearly erased. But I kept it.

If you paint your ladders, let them rest against something not yet seen.

Kindly,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed is the photo where I appear in the mirror, and another from Oskarström’s jute factory, with a few workers.

Sven Jonson → Engla Hägertz

Halmstad, November 1923
Miss Engla,

I write from the buzzing pause of the printing press. Esaias and I are forming Modern Reklam—a world between art and utility.

We saw your factory photo. No one smiles, yet presence radiates.

Is there an image you haven’t sold? One too quiet for the scream of a poster—but strong enough to see?

With respect,
Sven

P.S. Enclosed: an image from Vallgatan, Halmstad, recently painted in oil.

Engla Hägertz → Sven Jonson

Oskarström, January 1924
Mr. Jonson,

I have a negative—factory, two windows, hesitant light. No one wanted it. It was too silent.

But you may borrow it.

Posters are fixed eyes. They must see more clearly than we do.

/ Engla

Esaias Thorén → Engla Hägertz

Halmstad, March 1925
Miss Hägertz,

We’ll soon exhibit—at the Stadshotellet. Will you come?

I painted a table, a vase, fruit, and a chair leaning like in a dream. Sven calls it surrealism—I say everyday life in disguise.

Creation sways: red becomes green, geometry yearns for forest. Do you have a photo that tries to hide its subject?

Your friend,
Esaias

P.S. Enclosed: images of the still life and a banjo player I painted in oil last year.

Engla Hägertz → Esaias Thorén

Oskarström, April 1925
Esaias,

I have a picture. Double-exposed, tilted, difficult. It shows something—or nothing. You’ll see what comes forth.

Sometimes, what we don’t see is more true than what is visible.

Regards,
Engla

Engla Hägertz → Sven Jonson

Oskarström, February 1928
Dear Sven,

You spoke of Paris. But I believe you’re already on your way home in thought.

I developed a photo from Tylösand—a sea, a moment. I don’t know if it’s a beginning or an end.

If your paintings turn dreamlike, promise me they still reflect the world we actually tread.

What does silence look like in paint?

/ Engla

Sven Jonson → Engla Hägertz

Halmstad, March 1928
Miss Engla,

I never traveled. Paris already lives in our minds.

We talk of a shared direction—Esaias, Erik, Axel, Stellan, Waldemar, and I. A group—but perhaps more an inner landscape.

Your double-exposed photo said more than many manifestos.

Silence on canvas? Perhaps that’s what we’re trying to paint.

With friendship,
Sven

P.S. Here’s a painting from a Paris café I made two years ago. Perhaps it’s you, on your Paris journey? And some fishermen in similar colours,

Engla Hägertz → Erik Olson

Oskarström, May 1929
Mr. Olson,

I heard your paintings in Copenhagen were described as “full of inner machinery.” It sounded like a dream constructed with precision.

I have a photograph where a mirror shows a wall, but if you look closely, it’s only a tiled stove. Sometimes it happens: the image begins to imagine—and means it.

Perhaps you are there now—at the edge where reality and inner imagery blend.

With curiosity,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed is the photo with the mirror and stove. It also shows my brother Ferdinand’s wife Thora and their firstborn son Lars.

Erik Olson → Engla Hägertz

Halmstad, June 1929
Engla,

We’ve just named ourselves: the Halmstad Group. A modest name, but six visions rest in it, tightly interwoven.

Your photograph of the stove’s reflection gave us something quiet—a surface where thoughts can land. We want to surround ourselves with such images.

Our first joint exhibition will be alongside the Halmstad Exhibition. Come, Engla. Show us what we otherwise overlook.

With respect,
Erik

P.S. Enclosed: a cubist sketch, the painting Spring Song, and a photo of the whole group gathered.

Engla Hägertz → Halmstad Group

Oskarström, July 1929
Gentlemen,

What you have created is brave—a space for what is not yet named.

Three of my pictures deal with absorption. Two of children—inward, present. The third of an adult—damaged in development, but perhaps more truthful for it.

They carry something lingering. A quiet reminder: we don’t only sink in play, but in life itself.

You have my eye—and my silence.

Engla

P.S. Enclosed are the three images. Use them, or burn them.

Sven Jonson → Engla Hägertz

Söndrum, July 1936
Dear Miss Hägertz,

You once asked how silence looks on a canvas. I wonder—how does it appear in a photograph?

Here in Söndrum the trees lean toward the water as if listening. Stellan reads aloud, Erik draws symbols in the sand. I sketch constellations again in the margins.

Your photograph Room with a Window haunts me. It feels as though someone stands just outside—breathing.

From the edge of the sea,
Sven

P.S. Enclosed: the painting Nocturnal Walk, a jug, a fruit bowl, and an old photo of us from the Gothenburg Exhibition, 1930.

Engla Hägertz → Sven Jonson

Helsingborg, August 1936
Dear Sven,

Thank you for your greeting from Söndrum. I can almost smell the pine and salt.

I belong to many groups—photographers, friends, my family. Most important are probably we siblings. My brother Harald just bought land in Tylösand, overlooking the cliffs. We’ll call the house Klipperhus.

Silence in photography? It lives where something is missing—a chair without a table, a shadow without source, a cloud seen only in the mirror.

Stars in the margins, always,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: the photo Outlook and a picture of my family.

Stellan Mörner → Engla Hägertz

Söndrum, Summer 1937
Dear Engla,

I’m trying to paint a corridor from Esplunda—with mirrors and a cracked grandfather clock. But the canvas folds in on itself, like a butterfly wing.

Your picture of the child’s bicycle turning away… it speaks louder than anything direct.

Here is Söndrum: a circus, a séance. Last night I dreamt I was a chess piece—trapped but smiling.

Please send me something you love but no longer understand—perhaps your childhood shoes?

In theatrical confusion,
Stellan

P.S. Enclosed: a painting of our group, and a gouache with books and playing cards.

Engla Hägertz → Stellan Mörner

Arild, September 1937
Stellan—watchmaker of the invisible,

I enclose a photo of my childhood shoes. I no longer know whose they were—only that they carry someone’s memory.

Here in Arild, the fog lingers. It’s as if time sinks into the rocks.

I sometimes think all photography is spirit work. Light calls forth ghosts.

Let the corridor collapse. Perhaps an open door is enough.

Yours in reversed time,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: the shoes and a photo of me playing tennis in Arild.

Engla Hägertz → Erik Olson

Stockholm, November 1938
Dear Erik,

Your letters read like riddles spoken by wind through old curtains. I mean that as a compliment.

If I come to Söndrum this spring—I won’t photograph you as you are, but as you appear in solitude.

In fractured light,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: a photo of me and my sister Hedvig by a window where the light filters through.

Axel Olson → Engla Hägertz

Söndrum, June 1939
Engla—observer of reflections,

The others swam this morning. I stayed on shore and drew anchors in the sand. Always these anchors.

Your photograph—the one with the window—reminded me of a painting I did after my cataract surgery. Three boats, three perspectives: what we see, remember, imagine.

Söndrum? The wind sculpts the dunes like ribs. The pines hum.

Still anchored,
Axel

P.S. Enclosed: a self-sketch, view over the Nissan, and a beach photo with a rowboat.

Engla Hägertz → Axel Olson

Rydöbruk, July 1939
Dear Axel,

You have your anchors—I have my windows. The ones that are open, closed, and those that no longer lead anywhere.

Here in Rydöbruk, summer rests. The sluice gates move without water.

I enclose two photos of workers—as they are, with what they value. It became more real that way.

In driftwood and grain,
Engla

P.S. Photos of the workers and their world enclosed.

Waldemar Lorentzon → Engla Hägertz

Snöstorp, May 1940
Miss Hägertz,

Your photos of the workers—they reached me. In times like these, we need to show realities as they are.

I’ve painted a large canvas: Dark Mother. She holds nothing. Only her hands.

We discuss—abstraction or earth. But your photograph grounded me.

You carry sky in your lens.

Always loyal,
Waldemar

P.S. Enclosed: a photo from Mallorca 1932 and a painting of Söndrum by our colleague Sven X:et Erixon.

Engla Hägertz → Waldemar Lorentzon

Limmared, June 1940
Waldemar—painter of palms and prayers,

I believe I’ve seen your Dark Mother before—in a photo of my mother’s hands, resting over an empty bowl.

Limmared is quiet glass and old footprints. Your letter arrived with beach grass—now it rests in my window, beside a photo of frost.

Keep photographing hands. Even empty. Especially empty.

In silver and shadow,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: a photo of working hands. Handcraft remains strong in Oskarström.

Esaias Thorén → Engla Hägertz

Söndrum, July 1942
Dear Engla,

Your photograph of the hidden subject has stayed with me—I think I see a chair. I dreamt last night it was a metronome.

We still gather here—among spruces and mist. Sometimes we are six. Sometimes fewer. I carved a head from driftwood and gave it one eye, and someone said it looked like a spy.

Could you come and photograph us—not as artists, but as birds resting between storms?

In rhythm,
Esaias

P.S. Enclosed: a gouache titled The Farewell, and an oil painting by a fellow artist from the Söndrum quarry, Felix Hatz.

Engla Hägertz → Esaias Thorén

Tylösand, August 1942
Dear Esaias,

Nothing would please me more than capturing your colony as birds—seated, ruffled, singing songs only the wind understands.

The chair you asked about was found in a doctor’s office, quiet and alone. I waited long for the light to tremble enough to tell its story.

Tell your driftwood head: I forgive it. I too have seen with only one eye, once. It taught me to listen.

See you soon, under the Söndrum sky.

Holding my breath,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: a photo of two male friends—working, playing, enduring. And an image from Tylösand.

Waldemar Lorentzon → Engla Hägertz

Snöstorp, May 1944
Dear Engla,

During these war days, silence in Snöstorp has become more eloquent than ever. Today I painted a church without windows. No light, no insight.

I remembered your photos of workers and their worried faces. It was as if you already knew how the world would recede.

We miss your images. They’re needed now more than ever.

Kindly,
Waldemar

P.S. Enclosed: a painting of a green meadow—we must remind ourselves of light wherever we can find it. Also an older image of rest by the sea. I know how much the sea means to you.

Engla Hägertz → Waldemar Lorentzon

Oskarström, November 1944
Waldemar—painter of darkness and root threads,

It is a dark time in many ways.

One of my dear correspondents has just passed away, Hilma af Klint, whom you likely know.

I wonder: do you think Hilma would have joined you in Söndrum, had she known of you then?

With a sorrowful tone,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: a photo of a flower—to represent the transience of life.

Erik Olson → Engla Hägertz

Paris, 1953
Dear Engla,

I write from Paris. Here, painting lives another life, yet your photo of dusty bottles on a table in Rydö still comes to mind. It has nothing to prove. It just is.

I recently painted a self-portrait where my face is partially hidden. Perhaps it is your silence I’m emulating.

We talk of exhibiting together again. I hope we’ll get to show something of yours too.

Your friend,
Erik

P.S. Enclosed: a painting called Through the Window, and a photo of two friends. Also an older image of the Mother-of-Pearl Coast in Söndrum—do you still go there often?

28. Engla Hägertz → Halmstad Group
Oskarström, May 1964
Dear friends,

I saw your latest exhibition. The colors had matured, but something still danced inside them.

I sent a photo to the gallery—of a mirror where the camera appears in the reflection. They didn’t show it. That’s alright. Some images are meant only for the one who sees them first.

I’ve now decided to close the photo studio. I took the last portrait in March, of Gospova Buvac, daughter of one of the many Czechs who came here to work at the jute factory.

You are still my mirror in color.

Warmly,
Engla

P.S. Enclosed: a photo of a boy and his best friend, his dog. Leaving the studio feels a bit like saying goodbye to a close friend.

29. Sven Jonson → Engla Hägertz
Halmstad, February 1974
Engla,

We received your last envelope. The photo with the boy and dog. It was tender, beautiful—and troubled.

I won’t display it. I’ll keep it. It feels like a greeting between moments.

We don’t speak often anymore. But when we do, it’s silent. And in that silence, you remain.

/ Sven

P.S. Enclosed: a painting I call Prelude, and a photo of us from our summer gatherings, which Axel is organizing.

Afterword: In the Space Where Art Breathes

These letters were never sent.
And yet, they speak.

They speak not only of what could have been—but of what still is possible when creative spirits are allowed to echo across time, form, and silence.

Engla Hägertz worked not for fame, but for presence. Behind her camera, she caught the flicker of a gesture, the hush of a room, the tension of an unanswered question. Her lens did not seek spectacle—it sought truth in the pause.

The Halmstad Group, restless in their geometry and dreams, painted symbols into a landscape still learning how to see them. They reached beyond the visible, threading surrealism into the soil of southern Sweden. Each canvas a threshold; each composition a kind of longing.

This fictional correspondence is not an attempt to rewrite history. It is a way of listening differently. Of asking:
What if our creative timelines are not linear—but braided, layered, co-dreamed?
What if images remember each other?

In these imagined letters, photography and painting touch fingertips. Solitude is shared. Silence becomes a medium.

You, reader, are part of that dialogue now.

So take your time.
Stand in front of a quiet photograph.
Let a shadowed brushstroke linger longer than it should.

You might hear something.
You might begin to answer.

— Novisali

Learn more

Warm thanks for the contribution by Oskarströms Hembygdsförening, and the Hägertz family for contribution with photographies, and to Mjellby Konstgård and auction houses sharing pictures of Halmstadgruppens artworks.

More about Engla Hägetz (google translated website)  EnglaHagertz.se

Details about Engla from genealogy

Read the related Letter Exchange with Hilma af Klint

About Halmstadgruppen

Find 450 digital photos of Halmstadgruppens production

About Mejllby Konstgård, part of Halmstad Museum and dedicated to Halmstadgruppen

About Novisali 

Novisali, (alias Liselotte Engstam), is besides her roles as professional board member and advisor, a multi-media artist, with a curious, explorative mind and an ambition to learn and extend art experiences to current and new audiences using both traditional and new digital mediums. More information and exhibitions can be found via Novisali.com

This blog post is also shared at the blog of www.liselotteengstam.com, with the artist name Novisali.

The post In the Silence Between Images  first appeared on Novisali.