Hasselblad partners with björn ceder & stockholm open To artistically document tennis against corona fundraiser match

First professional male tennis match to occur since worldwide stop

Björn Ceder, Swedish photographer and creative director, was selected to document Tennis Against Corona, an aid initiative to support those strongly affected by the pandemic organized by Stockholm Open, the world’s oldest Association of Tennis Professional’s indoor tournament. On 10 May 2020, two of Sweden’s highest ranked tennis professionals and the world’s second-best ranked brothers in the sport, the Ymer brothers Mikael and Elias, competed head to head in the Royal Tennis Hall in Stockholm. Playing to empty stands, only a small camera crew was allowed to cover the fundraiser as the first match within professional male tennis to take place since the ATP called for a stop to all tournaments in March.

With 25 years of experience as an art and creative director, Swedish photographer Björn Ceder artistically captured this unique event through his alluring design and fashion-oriented lens. Utilizing the mirrorless medium format X1D camera in addition to a varied lineup of XCD lenses, Björn took on this project with inspiration from the distinctive style of Wes Anderson, drawing from his cinematic colour palette and using the vintage furnishings of the iconic Royal Tennis Hall to his advantage. “I didn’t want this to be a regular sports shoot. I decided to use super wide lenses to do the wide shots of the match – to let the architecture speak. For everything else, I used telephoto lenses and straight angles to work against creating typical sports photography shots,” explains Björn. His images are planned to be part of a physical exhibition at the yearly Stockholm Open match in fall 2020.