Historly launches the Kary H. Lasch Archive in collaboration with Booxencounters

Stockholm, 18 January 2026 – Historly, an established e-commerce destination for historic motifs, is now launching Kary H. Lasch Archive, through which a substantial selection of photographer Kary H. Lasch's work is being made available for the first time as collector's prints. The project is presented in collaboration with the curatorial platform Booxencounters.

Kary H. Lasch (1914–1993) was a Prague-born, internationally active fashion photographer who came to work in Sweden after the outbreak of the Second World War. During the 1950s and 1960s, his work moved along the boundary between fashion photography, reportage, and documentation of the international cultural and entertainment scene. Through his unique access to exclusive circles, he portrayed the glamour, celebrity, and social life of postwar Europe in a visual language marked by presence, movement, and spontaneity.

Lasch's photographs have previously been shown in institutional contexts, including exhibitions at Fotografiska, and are held in both private and public collections. Despite international attention, a large part of his extensive body of work remained privately administered and inaccessible to the public for several decades.

Through Kary H. Lasch Archive, a cohesive selection of this material is now being made available, following a careful restoration and digitisation process guided by respect for the character, provenance, and historical context of the original material.

The archival material is offered as carefully produced collector's prints, issued in limited editions. Each motif is printed on exclusive museum-quality paper, chosen for long-term durability and visual integrity, and is intended to function both as an artwork and as a historical object in private homes and collections.

– We are incredibly pleased and honoured to be entrusted with helping to steward and make this kind of cultural heritage accessible, says David Spennare, co-founder of Historly. The work on Kary H. Lasch Archive has been shaped by great humility before the material and its history, while the ambition has been to make it accessible to a new audience.

The collaboration with Booxencounters has been central to the curatorial process.

– I have followed Historly for a long time and appreciate how they consistently safeguard quality and integrity – both toward creators and the history behind the motifs, says Michel Hjorth, founder of Booxencounters. That made the collaboration around Kary H. Lasch Archive a natural one.

The launch should be seen as a first step in making the Kary H. Lasch Archive accessible, and as an archival project rather than a traditional mass-market launch, in which historic photographic material is presented through curated selections and high-quality collector's prints, with respect for the archive's origin and context.

The Kary H. Lasch Archive is available at www.historly.se as well as www.historly.com.