Can clothing tell the story of a person without revealing their face or showing their body? Swedish artist Jack Jildevik explores that question in Portrait of the Absent, a new book featuring 365 flat-lay photographs created over the course of a year.
The project presents a series of bodiless self-portraits, with carefully arranged outfits photographed on the floor of a storage facility. Each composition captures a different combination of garments and objects, turning everyday dressing into an exploration of identity, memory and personal transformation.
“I think it’s fascinating how much of someone’s identity can exist in the things they leave behind,” Jildevik said.
Rather than relying on the traditional elements of portraiture, such as facial expressions, gestures or physical presence, Jildevik allows clothing to communicate who he is. The result challenges the idea that garments need a body to fulfil their purpose, suggesting that the objects we collect and wear can hold traces of our experiences long after the moments themselves have passed.
Clothing as a Portrait of Identity
For Jildevik, the flat-lay format offers a way to reveal and conceal meaning simultaneously. By removing the body, he shifts attention towards the shape, texture and arrangement of individual pieces, encouraging viewers to consider clothing as an object in its own right.
Elsa Mueller, a Berlin-based art director who collaborated with Jildevik on the book and published it through her new publishing house, Prince, shares this fascination with the format. She sees flat-lay photography as a way of exposing the essence of an object while distorting its familiar shape, transforming something ordinary into something mysterious.
Jildevik’s background combines fashion, business and an enduring interest in art. Born in Stockholm, he studied law before moving to Paris to study fashion business and communication at ESMOD. He subsequently worked with CMMN SWDN and Hodakova, but an accident disrupted the expected trajectory of his career and redirected his attention towards artistic practice.
His interest in making things, however, began long before his professional life in fashion.
“I’ve been creating since I was a kid, always exploring, collecting and making things,” he said. He remembers being drawn to old objects, materials and the stories they carried, a fascination that has remained central to his work.
The clothes featured in Portrait of the Absent are therefore more than styling choices. Many have accompanied Jildevik through different periods of his life, carrying memories and representing versions of himself that no longer exist.
He has spent more than 15 years collecting garments and objects. For the book, he removed these pieces from their usual context and arranged them into new compositions, using them to construct self-portraits without appearing in the photographs.
“The person is absent, but in a way everything that makes the portrait personal is still there,” he explained.
A Year of Reinvention
Jildevik’s relationship with collecting began in childhood. Raised by parents who enjoyed flea markets and secondhand shopping, he developed an early appreciation for finding unusual objects, from small action figures to porcelain pieces.
He remains attached to the stories behind the things he owns, regardless of their monetary value. What matters is their individuality and the personal histories they accumulate.
His approach to fashion grew from the same impulse. He began collecting clothes at 15, building a wardrobe largely from vintage finds, flea markets and secondhand purchases. Many of his designer pieces came from older sellers in Italy or flea markets in Paris.
Martin Margiela was his first major designer influence, although his interest in clothing began long before he discovered the designer’s work.
The idea for Portrait of the Absent emerged from a habit of arranging outfits on the floor to imagine different characters he might become. One day, he photographed one of these arrangements and recognised its potential. What began as an experiment developed into a month-long challenge before he decided to commit to a full year.
The resulting 365 photographs document a daily act of reinvention. Although individual garments reappear, no complete outfit is repeated.
For Jildevik, the exercise became a way of asking a simple but revealing question: Who do I want to be today?
He describes clothing as a form of personal transformation, allowing him to explore identities that might otherwise remain inaccessible. In the past, dressing up offered an escape from difficult feelings and the anxiety that accompanied his tendency to overthink.
He often thought of clothing as armour, something that helped him face the day by becoming whoever he needed to be in that moment.
Pursuing his art, however, gradually changed that relationship. While his doubts have not disappeared, he says he no longer feels the same need to hide behind his clothes. Instead, he has found a greater sense of freedom through creating.
Looking Beyond the Body
One of the book’s central ideas is that clothing can communicate identity independently of the person wearing it. Without a face or body to guide interpretation, the photographs encourage viewers to focus on the garments themselves and the relationships between them.
Jildevik hopes the images reveal a consistent sense of self despite the variety of the outfits. The clothes may change dramatically from one photograph to the next, but he believes his personality remains visible through the objects he selects and the way he arranges them.
He also wants the project to encourage a deeper appreciation of clothing. Removing the body does not diminish the garments; instead, it allows their material qualities, construction and individual histories to take centre stage.
For the artist, fashion can be both liberating and restrictive. Clothing offers opportunities for experimentation, but it can also become a way of signalling membership in a group.
He observes this tension among young people who dress alike to establish a sense of belonging, as well as in workplaces where employees often adopt similar styles. In Sweden, he believes, shared visual signals can be particularly significant in a society he describes as reserved and sometimes lonely.
The desire to belong is understandable, but it can also limit the freedom to explore personal identity through dress.
Jildevik’s photographs offer an alternative: a wardrobe that moves between characters, eras and influences without settling into a single definition of the self.
Where Fashion Meets Art
Despite his artistic practice, Jildevik is cautious about declaring fashion to be art in every instance. He acknowledges the influence of Martin Margiela, who argued that fashion was not art, but sees artistic potential in the craftsmanship, design, creation and process involved in making clothes.
His answer is deliberately nuanced. Fashion, he believes, is too broad a category to fit neatly into a single definition. Not every garment is necessarily a work of art, but fashion can certainly become one.
He extends that belief to art more broadly, questioning the growing emphasis on commercial value. A painting selling for an extraordinary sum, he argues, does not automatically make sense when art should also be cherished and shared.
For Jildevik, the most meaningful artistic experiences are those that create a connection between people. A book, poem, painting, sculpture or even the opening moments of a song can offer a glimpse into another person’s inner world.
Sharing something created from personal experience can be an especially vulnerable act, allowing others access to feelings that may be difficult to articulate.
This openness is also central to Portrait of the Absent. Although the artist never appears in the images, the photographs reveal an intimate record of his tastes, memories, anxieties and evolving sense of self.
An Open-Ended Story
Mueller’s approach to the book reinforces its themes of absence and memory. Each photograph occupies the same position on the page, allowing readers to notice subtle changes as they move through the year. The sequence has no fixed beginning or ending, meaning the book can be opened at different points and experienced in a new order.
Even the slipcase carries the idea further. Mueller created its printed design by pressing an actual shirt onto an inked gel plate and transferring the resulting impression onto paper. The garment itself is absent, but its physical trace remains.
For Jildevik, completing the project has opened up new possibilities rather than bringing his interest in collecting and arranging objects to a close. He is already considering ways to develop the concept further, including creating similar portraits of other people.
Ultimately, Portrait of the Absent is both a celebration of clothing and an inquiry into what makes a portrait personal. Its 365 compositions suggest that identity does not depend entirely on physical presence. Sometimes, the objects we leave behind—or choose to arrange before us—can tell a story that a conventional portrait cannot.
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