Diafragma is a photo book composed of folded sheets in varying sizes, all housed within a custom-made box. The work investigates how stress, societal expectations, and internal rhythms imprint themselves on the body and mind. Through layered, close-up, and often abstracted imagery, it reflects on the unseen pressures that shape lived experience. The title — referring to the diaphragm muscle — serves as a metaphor for the shifting space between the emotional and the physical, between contraction and release.

Rather than documenting external reality, the photographs build a visual language for sensation: for holding one’s breath, tightening, unfolding, and the subtle movements that exist beneath the surface of everyday life. Floral and organic motifs appear almost bodily, moving between micro and macro, suggesting internal landscapes rather than outward scenes.

More than a conventional photo book, diafragma invites an embodied encounter. To engage with it, the reader must physically interact with the structure — unfolding pages in multiple directions, navigating layers, and handling delicate papers that respond to touch. Because the sheets lie loose, the sequence shifts each time the box is opened, allowing the narrative to reconfigure itself much like memory does: returning, fading, or surfacing anew. In this sense, the act of reading becomes a quiet negotiation of material, breath, and attention.

diafragma has received the Hasselblad Photobook Award and was among the winners of the photobook prize at Belfast Photo Festival. The book is published with support from Norsk Fotografisk Fond, Norske Fagfotografers Fond, Fritt Ord, and Kulturdirektoratet.

Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard - Diafragma
Published on Multipress
24,5x 34cm,
78 pages in special made box
Offset print
Edition of 300
ISBN 978-82-92224-67-0