Biography

Elli Asker (short for Elnara Askerova) is an Azerbaijani–Swedish fine art photographer and a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Her artistic practice grows out of a personal experience of migration, displacement, and identity in constant motion.

With an academic background in political science — focusing on international migration and ethnic relations — she bridges the analytical with the intuitive. In the space of the camera, politics and poetry converge; body and belonging intertwine.

Asker’s work moves within the tension between visibility and vulnerability, where the body becomes a site of both resistance and presence.
Her portraits and visual narratives reveal queer experience as deeply human — marked by dignity, intimacy, and quiet strength.

She has received international recognition, including the Sony World Photography Organization’s Alpha Female Award and the Prix de la Photographie (PX3), and has exhibited at institutions such as Liljevalchs Spring Salon and the Hasselblad Photo Salon.

As the founder and chair of QueerKraft- Sodertalje, she works to strengthen queer voices within contemporary art and to build communities beyond the normative.

In her artistic and community practice alike, Asker seeks not to speak about people, but with them — in a space where photography becomes both language and listening.

My work emerged from silence and isolation — photography became a way to breathe, to understand the world from a distance.

Today, it has become a way to return to others, through portraits moving between vulnerability, identity, and trust. - Elli Asker.