In Vindstädningen (The Attic), Olle Essvik assembles a small book out of an emptying of his own loft. The publisher, Rojal, describes a space that still carries traces of earlier tenants — a cross hanging from a beam, paint stains on the floor, a pair of skis left behind — and the photographer treats those remains as a working archive. The cleanup was both practical and reluctant: most belongings were already packed into brown boxes whose contents he could no longer recall, and what surfaced were the rejected or out-of-time things, including objects never used at all.

Essvik made the book, in every sense, from what the attic supplied. The publisher credits the printing and binding to him as well, using found materials and equipment rather than new stock, so the volume takes its shape from paper quantities that were simply on hand. That is why copies reportedly vary in format and paper, and why the small Swedish edition’s modest dimensions and 88 pages feel like a document that could only have been made once, from these leftovers. The printing is listed as ink, laser and hot foil; text and captions are set in Baskerville and Gill Sans.

What separates the result from ordinary attic photography is temperament. The Svensk Bokkonst citation calls it gloomy, humorous and tender — a record held together by things rather than by narrative. The old skis, the padlocked door, the spare saucepan and the tennis racket for matches that may never happen are not illustrations of an idea; they are the book’s structure, an inventory that doubles as a self-portrait of someone deciding what to keep.

Since it is a place-specific little publication and won the 2024 Lilla Fotobokspriset, the Swedish award’s artist-book distinction, collectors have reason to treat it as an artist’s book as much as a photobook. The maker’s role is inseparable from the object, and the edition gives the attic’s material limits a printed afterlife.