Winner of:

2024 Swedish Photo Book of the Year!

2024 Danish Art Critics Prize (Kunstkritikerprisen) for Best Publication of the Year.

The artist book Things Change Anyway (2023) is a collaboration between non-binary, trans* artist MC Coble and art / photo historian Louise Wolthers about various kinds of metamorphosis in life, bodies, relationships, and nature. The book first and foremost consists of photographs from the couple’s image archive, spanning a decade and presented in radical, non-linear editing. Intersecting the image flow are five essays by Wolthers and twelve drawings by Coble. 

Above all, the book is an examination of the meaning of photography, looking and being seen. One strand of photographs in this book documents Coble’s ongoing gender affirmation, another theme is Wolthers’ struggles with menopause. Other strands include still lifes and snapshots from the everyday – with all its vulnerability, imperfection, and impermanence. The image strands are woven together to form a dynamic montage across time and space reflecting what change, non-human connectivity and queer kinship might look like. 

Wolthers’ personal essays contextualize single images with a wider body of photo history and gender/queer/trans* theory. Coble’s drawings form a visual, non-linear diary and synthesize various experiences – dealing with depression and during COVID, of being put on hold by the system, and of ways of transitioning and gaining agency. 

Things Change Anyway (192 pages) is co-published by Breadfield Press (Sweden) and forlaget *[asterisk] (Denmark). Color photographs by Coble and Wolthers, black and white drawings by Coble and essays by Wolthers titled: Re-enacting Representation, Connected by Blood; Related by other Substances; Mirroring Bodies; Queering Landscapes, Changed by Nature and Pictures Never Taken. Graphic Design by MC Coble and Louise Wolthers with support from Tina Enghoff. Printed 2023 at Narayana Press with supported by The New Carlsberg Foundation.

This book can be found in ALL Swedish Libraries thanks to Kulturrådets Litteraturstöd. This Swedish Arts Council Literature Support can be applied for after a book has been published in Sweden and in turn they purchase and distribute over 260 copies throughout the country. In these times it feels very important to have content containing to trans* visibility, non-binary and gender non-conforming identities, queer joy, menopause, self-determination and one's own agency when it come to your body--accessible and free in the sacred spaces of libraries.

There are limited copies left in print as of Feb. 2024.

If you're interested in purchasing the book we would recommend first contacting our publishers Breadfield Publishers (SE), forlaget *[asterisk] (DK). The book is also sold online in various bookstores in Sweden and Denmark as well as through online retailers.

If it's not possible for you to buy this book but you think it is especially important for you to see or share with someone you care about please contact me directly, we will figure something out. Reach out at: mc(at)mccoble.com