The Stranger was published in 2023 by the internationally renowned Italian publishing house Skira.
In The Stranger, Holst approached an all male cast of strangers in public places, exploring ideas of young identity and masculinity.
His portraits and methods of working, all done on film with a vintage Hasselblad camera, is diametrical opposite to the filtered and fast paced images from social media. The aesthetics throughout the publication is a nod to past generations of photographers and a testament to the 14 years of images it holds. Landscapes and anecdotes tell stories beside the portraits, sometimes of the encounters between artist and subject and at other times of Holst´s state of mind.
The book holds a foreword by art historian, gallerist and friend of Holst, Joakim Borda-Pedreira, and an essay by artist, writer and curator Nina Strand. The publication can be found wherever fine art books are sold, such as:
Things That Never Happened is Holst´s first book, published by one of Norways leading art book publisher Teknisk Industi in 2017.
Set against a backdrop of a never ending forest and neighbourhood gardens, the reader is invited into a secluded world of adolescence. By portraits and landscapes, a fantastical and sometimes challenging passage of youth slowly unfolds. Scripted stories of loneliness, friendship, jealousy and desire merge as characters get older throughout, pinning the photographs as stories part of our collective memory of childhood and growing up.
Photographs from Things That Never Happened has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums, and one of the six chapters the book holds, secured Holst a Hasselblad Fellowship.
Things That Never Happened is distributed through Motto.