Photographer Jacqueline Landvik captures her sister Sofie’s “true beauty” in these intimate images

Though photographer Jacqueline Landvik and her sister, model Sofie Landvik, have worked together countless times, this shoot in particular was years in the making. “We’ve been hustling with each other, getting the money jobs,” says Jacqueline. “But this shoot was more to express ourselves. I wanted to shoot Sofie not in a fashion sense, but capture her true beauty. For me, as a sister, I can do that the best because I know her the best.” Sofie nods, adding “I do a lot of fashion and a lot of commercial fashion and they strip you down from your identity. I haven’t really felt that I’ve been seen.”

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The Norwegian sisters are sitting in Sofie’s Oslo apartment (she returned home from London to study Creative Industries Management at BI Business School) – the very space where they shot this story. While their closeness is immediately evident, both in these intimate images and in the way in which they finish each other’s sentences as we chat, but it was a bit of a journey to get here. “We’re 20 months apart,” says Jacqueline who, at 29 to Sofie's 27, is the big sister on paper but not always in practice. “So we grew up fighting like crazy. It was honestly batshit insane.”

It took some physical distance to ultimately bring the sisters closer together. “I did high school in New York and when I came back home we just connected in a totally different way,” says Sofie. In some ways, it was as if they were meeting each other’s authentic selves for the first time. This was especially true in the case of Jacqueline, who came out as trans in her teens.“When I came out of the closet at 15, I naturally distanced myself from my whole family,” she says. “That’s something you need to do when you’re queer.” Sofie nods and adds, “You need to figure yourself out.” Sofie, meanwhile, came into her own as well. “You had found yourself,” Jacqueline says to her sister. “I was shook. I was like, ‘Is this my sister?’”

As soon as Sofie moved back to Oslo, it was game on. “We had this new wave of friendship and just started hanging out all the time,” says Jacqueline, who quickly integrated her sister into her queer group of friends (among them, models Ceval and Inti Wang). “We no longer had separate lives – we did everything together.” That isn’t to say there isn’t the occasional sisterly infighting. But both Jacqueline and Sofie are quick to call each other out on their nonsense. “That’s our love language,” jokes Jacqueline. “There’s never long grudges,” adds Sofie. “If we feel something, we say it.”

The proof of Jacqueline and Sofie’s singular bond came when Jacqueline underwent her feminisation surgery. “She shaved her whole hair off,” Jacqueline says of Sofie. It wasn’t even a conscious act of support, but rather an act of sisterly instinct. “She was a really strong support for me,” says Jacqueline. “She was a really important part of me surviving that whole transition phase with my family.”

Though the sisters now live in different cities – Jacqueline relocated to Paris a couple years ago, she shares an apartment with her not-by-blood sister, Ceval – the closeness remains. They talk all the time, at all hours. “We’ll call each other at 4AM after a club,” says Jacqueline.

Yes, these images capture the spirit and beauty of Sofie (“I feel they show the duality of Sofie’s masculinity and femininity,” notes Jacqueline), but they also capture the rare closeness between subject and photographer. Jacqueline puts it perfectly: “We’re best friends and sisters.”