About
I’m Mav Gutarra, a Stockholm-based film photographer. I grew up in the 1980s surrounded by 35mm film because my father is a photographer. I got serious about photography in 2016, when I bought a 1971 medium format Hasselblad, and I’ve worked with a single lens for nearly a decade since.
My work centers on black and white portraiture and new takes on the still life, shot entirely on analog film with studio lighting. For me, film and light are a way to explore life, death and what lies beyond them. Shooting film makes me think more like a painter than a photographer. A daily meditation practice shapes how I see: my aim is to make every moment infinite, so the images feel cinematic, classic and quiet.
Through my studio, Portrait By Maverick, I’ve photographed for TEDxStockholm, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, and my work has been reposted by Kodak. I’m also a member of the artist collective The 3rd Public. My debut solo exhibition, Still Eternal – Memento te Aeternum Esse, opens November 20, 2026.
Poppies
Inspiration
My first exposure to photography as art came through my father, a photographer. I grew up around his film cameras in the 1980s.
Music was my first foray into making art. I was inspired by the music of my youth, from grunge and heavy metal to pop and Euro techno. Eventually I began writing my own songs, which I describe as a blend of vintage Americana and the sounds of the ’80s and ’90s.
Later in life, David Lynch became a huge influence. I admire his surrealism, his take on Americana and his dramatic use of chiaroscuro to tell a story.
Today I draw on the Old Dutch Masters, their Vanitas still lifes and the memento mori tradition. My new series, Still Eternal, reinterprets that tradition on medium format film. In photography, I’m inspired by great landscape and fashion photographers: Ansel Adams for his command of light and tone, and Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton for the power and drama of the black and white portrait.
I am a self-taught photographer. I have no formal training in photography, but I have privately studied the technical side of film. My eye developed through years of photographing people, places and nature, and through working with a single lens on a 1971 medium format Hasselblad for nearly a decade.
My academic background is in law. I hold a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Kent (2001–2004) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Law from the University of West London (2009–2010), which I completed with Distinction.
Still Eternal – Memento te Aeternum Esse
Debut solo exhibition, Artist Arena, Upplandsgatan 48, Stockholm
November 20–30, 2026. Vernissage on Friday, November 20, 17:00–21:00.
Still Eternal is a new body of analog work that reinterprets the Vanitas tradition of the Old Dutch Masters. The show premieres three large-scale still lifes shot on a medium format Hasselblad and two Polaroid SX-70 triptychs, shown together with a selection of floral studies from 2022 to 2025.
I shoot on a 1971 Hasselblad 500C/M medium format film camera, and I’ve worked with a single lens for nearly a decade. Medium format film captures far more detail and tonal depth than 35mm. There’s something about this camera that captures the world in a way I can only describe as magical. In the studio, I work with controlled studio lighting. I also shoot on Polaroid SX-70 instant film, where each image is a one-of-a-kind original.
A professional lab develops my film and scans the negatives at high resolution. I review the photographs and choose the ones that have an eternal quality to them. I then edit the scans myself in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to get the look and feel right.
The final step is printing and framing. My photographs are produced as archival pigment prints on Canson Platine Fibre Rag paper. They are framed in black wood with a white passe-partout and anti-reflective glass. I don’t print the work myself, but I oversee every step from camera to wall.
I don’t paint in the traditional sense, but I approach photography like a painter. In the studio, I build each image with light, composition and color, much as the Old Dutch Masters did on canvas.
Works for sale (8)
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