In 1667 a 12-year-old girl, Gertrud Svensdotter, was accused of walking on water in Älvdalen, Sweden. This event marked the beginning of the Swedish witch-hunts, a period of mass hysteria and horror in Älvdalen and its neighbouring regions. This series uses photography to reconfigure the history and myth of these events, igniting a contemporary dialogue around Gertrud whilst allowing for a lost world to be resurrected on new terms, where the outcome of the events is not yet settled.

Most of the photographs in Gertrud were created through interventions in the forest. Utilising the landscape, a cast of characters and seemingly talismanic objects, Daniels’ has drawn upon a surrealist desire to ‘re-enchant the world’, aiming to re-envisio the forest as a place filled with history and cultural value such as stories, myth and magic. Interspersed with Daniel’s photographs are those from the archive of the local photographer Tenn Lars Persson (1878-1938). As the book Gertrud unfolds the intertwined sets of photographs disorientate the viewer by unsettling ideas around place and linear time.