ArtistSwedish/Austrian/American
Cooper & Gorfer
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Cooper & Gorfer is the collaborative name of Sarah Cooper (born 1974, Pittsburgh, USA) and Nina Gorfer (born 1979, Vienna, Austria). The two met in Gothenburg, Sweden, around 2005 while completing master's studies at HDK-Valand, the Academy of Art and Design. Cooper had a background in fine art photography and music production; Gorfer came from architecture. Their distinct disciplines merged into a shared practice that defies easy categorization.
The duo works at the intersection of photography, collage, painting, and textile. Their process typically begins with extended research into a community or cultural group, followed by collaborative portrait sessions that are then layered with handmade materials, painted surfaces, and archival imagery in post-production. The result is neither straight documentary nor pure fabrication, but something in between: richly constructed images where surface and symbol are inseparable.
Their bodies of work consistently return to questions of identity, displacement, and belonging, particularly as experienced by women. Projects have focused on communities as varied as indigenous groups in Greenland, immigrant women in Scandinavia, and nomadic peoples of Central Asia. The series "Between These Folded Walls, Utopia" examined how identity is maintained and transformed through migration; it was later developed into a short film that received an honorary mention at the Tempo Documentary Film Festival in 2021.
Cooper & Gorfer have exhibited at Fotografiska in Stockholm, New York, and Tallinn, the Hasselblad Center, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, the MAK Frankfurt, and at international festivals across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Their work is held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Iceland, the Hasselblad Foundation, NOMA, and the Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, as well as in numerous corporate and private collections.
In 2018 they received the German Photo Book Award for their monograph "I Know Not These My Hands." They serve as Hasselblad Ambassadors, a role reflecting both the technical precision and conceptual ambition of their practice.
On the Nordic auction market, Cooper & Gorfer's work appears primarily at Bukowskis, which accounts for all 13 items recorded on Auctionist. Prices have ranged from under 400 SEK to over 1,300 SEK for smaller prints, with the highest recorded sale being "Niza and the Animals" (2017) at 1,357 SEK. The market for their work is still developing within the auction channel; primary market demand and institutional acquisitions currently represent the main route for collectors.