Fading Stories — A photo exhibition without a single photograph on display, using AR to reveal the faces and voices that history cannot afford to lose.

Fading Stories was an exhibition at Fotografiska in Stockholm, built around 23 survivors of the Holocaust, photographed and documented by Sanna Sjöswärd. Raoul Wallenberg Academy wanted their testimonies to reach a younger audience before the last voices are gone, and to reach them in a form that could not be quietly edited down.

Fotografiska is a photography museum. This exhibition had no photographs on its walls. Instead, each survivor was represented by a typographic poster carrying quotes from their testimony, with the most difficult parts crossed out like a censored document. On its own, each poster read as an ordinary, everyday story. Then the layout of the poster itself worked like a QR code: point the app at it, and the portrait, the voice and the full, uncensored testimony unlock in AR. The gaps fill back in. The whole truth returns.

That was the point. The censored poster shows how easily a testimony can be flattened into something harmless. The app shows what was taken out. I led the concept, the design and branding, and the app itself, working closely with the developers to make it hold up in the room.

The identity stays black and white throughout, keeping attention on the faces and the words. The main typeface is Eksell Display, by Swedish designer Olle Eksell, its serifs carrying a hint of the Hebrew alphabet, paired with a contemporary sans to bridge past and present.

The exhibition drew 62,000 visitors over eight weeks and heavy national press. It went on to win a Red Dot Grand Prix, D&AD Graphite Pencil and a Silverägg, among others.