IKEA launches Artist in Residence Programme with Annie Leibovitz

The legendary photographer will spend the next year traveling the world to capture the homes of ordinary people.

At Milan Design Week, IKEA announced a new residency program for artists, of which Annie Leibovitz will be the first participant. It’s no coincidence that one of the world’s best-known photographers has been chosen for the initiative, as the Swedish furniture giant’s own research, Life at Home, found that people think real homes are under-represented in the media. This could be even more true as of 2022, with 61% of respondents saying that rising prices (‘cost of living crisis’) have a significant impact on their home budget.

Leibovitz’s brief is quite straightforward: this year she will travel the world to capture the subtle nuances of the most important arena of our daily lives. The American photographer will visit seven countries—the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Italy, India, Germany, and Sweden—where she will photograph everyday people and their homes. However, you probably shouldn’t expect to see garbage spilling out of the trash can, dirty refrigerators, or peeling wallpaper, as Leibovitz is not known for her gritty realism, while her artistic portraits regularly appear on the covers of the world’s biggest magazines. She admits to being an IKEA fan herself: there’s almost nothing in her California home that she didn’t buy from the Swedish furniture brand. “Home is more important now than ever. Especially since Covid and the hybrid model of working from home. (...) In the same way that there has been a typical idea in the fashion industry about what size a woman should be, there’s been a typical idea of what a home is. (...) But now we’ve opened up in all sorts of ways, and there’s a difference between a home and feeling at home. And the latter can happen in many different places and maybe that’s more important now than an actual home,” said the photographer. IKEA will unveil the finished works at the end of the year.

Source: Wallpaper
Photos: IKEA

• design
• annie leibovitz
• ikea
• art photo