Group exhibition at Copenhagen Photo Festival June 2023
Relations is a documentary photography exhibition made by a group of 11 photojournalism students from the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX).
Our nations’ cultures and religions define and shape the lives that we live. Be it through our relationship to each other, to ourselves, to the society or to the nature that surrounds us. Through ten separate stories, the photographers in this exhibition document various human relations and ways of dealing with life.
All stories are made within the field of documentary photography. This means that no pictures have been digitally altered, no items have been added or removed in the pictures. The peoples’ stories and the situations are real. The reportage pictures have been photographed as the photographers experienced the situations and no moments have been staged.
BENJAMIN
VOLDUM KROG
WHERE MOUNTAINS MEET FJORDS AND PEOPLE UNITE WITH NATURE
Surrounded by mountains and tundra, shrouded in snow and sunshine, lies Kangerlussuaq. A small settlement of just 500 people. It is tucked away at the bottom of a 170-kilometer-long fjord that stretches all the way out from the west coast of Greenland. The inhabitants have a strong connection to their surroundings and are in many ways dependent on nature. Both for their survival and well-being. Nature is a business, a playground and, for some, also spiritual. In early March 2023, I went to Kangerlussuaq to feel nature and meet those who use it in different ways.
In the southern part of Kangerlussuaq, furthest away from housing and inhabitants, the local sled dogs live. The homemade fences and sheds divide the sled dogs so that the owner can keep track of each pack. The dogs watch me calmly as I walk past. Long metal chains hold them inside the pens, so they can only run in a circle 10 meters in diameter. It seems strange to have dogs on chains like that, but there must be a reason for it, I think.
I understand the reason when all the dogs suddenly become aware of a sound. It sounds like an old engine and wheels against snow and gravel, but it is not yet possible to see where the sound is coming from. Then a big red Toyota Land Cruiser appears at the top of a nearby hill. All the dogs turn their noses up and start howling. The sounds of the dogs, which almost sound more like screaming than barking, drown out all other sounds. The four-wheel drive car rolls up to the kennel and out steps Fransisca with a big smile.
Fransisca David Olsen is 24 years old and grew up in Kangerlussuaq. She has had sled dogs since she was 11 years old, and during the winter months she takes tourists on trips. She has been doing this for over 10 years. For her, the dogs are both a business and something she enjoys.
They are expensive to run and it has to be worthwhile to have them.
“I wish I had a bit more time to get out into nature by myself and experience winter in a different way than with tourists. I really like to get out and enjoy nature, but I also get tired of meeting new people all the time”, she tells me when we talk about her work.
I meet Johanne Beck and her cousin Abel outside their house. They live in a big blue house in Kangerlussuaq for three to four months of the year. Normally they live in the town of Sisimiut, which is on the coast. They are in Kangerlussuaq for work, and Johanne has invited me to work in her and her cousin’s shed.
“When I turn 70 years old this summer, my family and I will walk from Sisimiut to Kangerlussuaq. It’s a tradition and we’ve done it when I turned 50, 60 and now 70.”
She says it as if it’s nothing, but shortly before, she told me that this particular trip lasts six to eight days and stretches through 170 kilometers of mountainous landscape. They must be made of different stuff up here.
In a small white shed on the south side of Kangerlussuaq, the two cousins work together. From the outside, it looks like all the other white sheds and containers in town, but as we enter the door, I’m greeted by a sight I don’t exactly see every day.
The shed is insulated, which in this case is not to retain heat, but to keep it cold. The room is below freezing. It is essentially a chest freezer the size of a small apartment.
The sparse lighting from the few bulbs on the ceiling makes the room yellowish and dim. In addition, there is no doubt that it is only made for Johanne and Abel to work in.
I get in the way just by standing in the corner and watching. That’s how crowded it is. And it smells of animals. Large pieces of musk ox lie neatly in rows, sorted according to which piece of meat on the body it is and where it is to be delivered. All hunters in Greenland have a quota of how many musk oxen they can shoot. Johanne and Abel have shot a total of 25 this year.
“Nature has great, great powers. You must respect it, you have to listen and learn from it - and you have to be a bit humble”, Johanne tells me. She doesn’t elaborate but when a woman in her seventies who has spent her whole life in nature tells me this, I can’t help but listen and nod in recognition.
Mom and son
Paornanguak Gundersen picks me up after she gets off work as a receptionist at one of the city’s hotels. We are going hunting with her 13-year-old son, Milas. Several times a week, the two of them go hunting. In summer they hunt reindeer and musk oxen, in winter grouse. They do it to fill the three chest freezers they have at home, but mostly they do it for the sheer joy of it.
“Nature... It’s just healing. Here, nature is our psychologist. You get energy, joy and peace from nature. And you enjoy the fact that it’s so close out here. You trust the nature,” Paornanguak tells me.
It’s not long before Milas spots four grouse not far from us. They quickly load Milas’ rifle. The rifle is too heavy for Milas to hold and aim at the same time, so he uses Paornanguak’s back to hold it still. She squats down, he puts the rifle on her, and within a few seconds there is a loud bang, followed by complete silence.
“One, two, three... You got one, Milas!”, Paornanguak shouts in excitement after counting that there were three grouse that took off and one didn’t. Milas bursts into cheers and runs off dancing to retrieve his prey.
It felt simultaneously absurd and wonderful to experience hunting in Greenland’s beautiful, vast hinterland, and to see a 13-year-old boy doing TikTok dances on a mountainside after shooting a bird with a rifle that is almost longer than he is tall.
Bathed in the last sunlight of the day, they walk back to the car with their prey packed tightly in five-liter plastic bags. Tomorrow they will go hunting again. Some children go to soccer in the afternoon. Some parents stay home on the couch after work. Milas and Paornanguak hunt together, and they do it as often as they can.
Nature is everywhere in Adam Lyberth’s home. The walls are plastered with paintings and photographs of the Greenlandic landscape, lakes, ice and mountains. The huge window in the living room faces the icy fjord, sparkling and shimmering in the perpetual sunlight.
On a shelf above one of the windows in the living room are a couple of tupilaks. Many tourists may know tupilaks as a fun souvenir to bring home from Greenland. For Adam, they mean something completely different. Tupilak means ancestral soul and is a small carved figure that protects its owner from enemies. Usually made from animal bones but Adam’s are made from stone. He got them from a Greenlandic artist and they mean a lot to him. They give him energy. Both physically and mentally.
In Kangerlussuaq, nature is a resource and a way of making money. It can be used in many ways. Adam is a tour guide in the settlement. Therefore, he also uses nature as a source of income. But for Adam, nature is much more than a way to earn money. When he was 17 years old, he discovered his ability to talk to his ancestors and to fairies.
“When I was 17 there was a snow avalanche in the town, I lived in. Several people were buried under the snow and were impossible to find. Suddenly, a glowing fairy came out of the darkness and led me to a snow pile. I dug and dug and found an elderly man. If it hadn’t been for that fairy, he would have died. I have saved over seven lives with the help of the fairies.”
For several hours we talk about nature and the stories that come with it. He talks about encounters with villagers who perished in snow avalanches three thousand years ago, how he can communicate with animals through music, and about nature
religion in Greenland.
“Greenlanders were very spiritual. Christianity took that away from us,” Adam says when I ask if nature is important to Greenlanders. For Adam, it is important that the stories and belief in the powers of nature are not lost.
“A Village in the Making” is a documentation of the Self-Sufficient Village in Southern Funen. It focuses on an ecovillage where community and sustainability are an integrated part of everyday life. Through unique images and stories, Emil Bay Gregersen and Martin Thomas Ford lead the reader on a journey through the village and show how an idea planted 20 years ago has now been realised.
Denmark is a pioneering country with the highest number of ecovillages in relation to the size of the country. This is partly due to an increased awareness of climate change and the impact we have on the environment.
In general, more people wish to take responsibility for their lifestyles and contribute to a more sustainable future. Ecovillages like the SelfSufficient Village are an inspiring example of how sustainability and community can go hand in hand and create a positive change.
In Romania, in a suburb of Bucharest, lives Mihalela Minca. She is a Roma witch and, according to her own statement, the strongest in Romania. In her clan of witches, consisting of her two daughters, daughter-in-law, and their daughters, they help people with everything from love problems, failing health, financial difficulties, evil spirits, and substance abuse. The interest in witches abilities and magic increased with the emergence of the internet. Today Mihaela and her Clan have customers spread all over the world. And in an otherwise patriarchal culture, their work as witches has made them economically independent from all the men in their lives. They now live as the free women their ancestors were not.
During communism in Romania, the Roma witches were persecuted and harassed by the police and the government. If they were caught practicing witchcraft or helping people around the towns, they were thrown into prison. They were seen as a threat to the social order and the established society.
Mihaela Minca’s mother was one of the witches who was imprisoned for several years under communism. A generational trauma that Mihaela still believes can be felt in the family. But with the fall of communism, interest in the witches and their secret skills also began to rise again.
In Romania, there is still a culture of secrecy among the part of the population that comes to the country’s witches. One does not speak too loudly about it. But today the witches have gained an established place in the society. Some believe that they are as important as the church.
In most Roma clans, it is the man who is supposed to provide for and work for the family. The man also has the final say and makes most decisions on behalf of the woman. However, in witch families, this has changed, and some now perceive witches as the only Roma clan where women work on equal footing with men. The recognition of their profession has been important. It has allowed witches like Mihaela and her daughters to reposition themselves in a patriarchal society. Their work as witches is, for them, an expression of female liberation and a rebellion against a culture that has been dominated by men.
Girls receive their ADHD diagnosis 11.5 years later than boys with ADHD do. One of the reasons they go unnoticed is, that they don’t express hyperactivity like boys with ADHD do. The girls quickly learn how to adapt to social rules by mirroring their friends, because survival lies in knowing the rules of the game. They strive to fit in, and therefore the diagnosis becomes difficult to see with the naked eye. If the girls don’t manage to blend in, they are considered rude or ill-mannered.
Imagine you have a disability, but you don’t know it. Or you know that you have a functional impairment in the brain, but you have no idea, how to behave in a society with a hidden disability, which can almost feel like a declaration of failure. This is the starting point for Julie, Marie, Sarah, Isabella and Cecilie. On the outside, you see five completely ordinary young girls, but they all have ADHD, a diagnosis that challenges them every day.
“I see it as one way the brain can be. Brains are very different. Therefore, ADHD symptoms are also different, and no two
ADHD diagnoses are the same. Therefore, it is difficult to detect the disorder, because the patterns can be so individual”, says Lisa Thygesen, psychotherapist specializing in ADHD in adults, and diagnosed with ADHD herself.
When you have ADHD, you have “a tired brain”, and this is due to irregular distribution and regulation of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. This means that an ADHD brain has a worse starting point than a neurotypical brain. ADHD is a neuropsychiatric disorder that can have consequences for the quality of life, as the disorder causes disturbances in the person’s attention and activity. ADHD is an abbreviation for “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”. There are both degrees of severity and variants of the disorder. The type of ADHD is determined on the basis of how prominent the symptoms of attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and impulsivity are for the individual. The diagnosis ADD is given when the attention deficit is predominant, and here hyperactivity and impulsivity will be present to a lesser extent or not at all.
Once upon a time, Julie’s big dream was to become a forensic pathologist, but today the dream is completely different. Instead, it is design technologist. Julie is 21 years old and starting her third sabbatical. Before that, she took an STX on the biotech line. After some hard years at school, she was now ready to go out into the world with a red student cap and a grade point average of 11.3. In elementary school, she was the diligent student in the class, who was always in a good mood and had the energy to help her classmates. Outwardly, she seemed to be enjoying herself, but as soon as she closed the door behind her at home, she crawled into her bed and closed in on herself. Julie’s head couldn’t take it anymore, and now she was again in a big deficit after a single day of school.
“My girlfriends call me a living encyclopedia. I have always loved to learn.
It gives me so many points in the energy account, to be able to seek out, and gain more knowledge. If I discover new things, or things I know nothing about, I do my best to educate myself in the field. But it is also the side of myself that I like to show off. But another side of me is the one who closes the door to my room, the one who needs a time-out from life outside. The one who has to respect how tired she really is. I’m not one to shoot around and run up and down the walls. But my head is overwhelmed all the time. I’m more worried about when I’ll get back up if I finally lay down and rest. Having all the motivation in the world to learn and learn and learn, and an ADHD brain that can’t manage sensory input in any way, is bound to go wrong at some point. My brain will crash.”
After taking sick leave from her biology studies due to stress, Marie starts seeing her doctor. During this time, a nurse suspects that Marie might have ADHD. Therefore, she asks Marie to take a test. That test will be the first step towards the ADHD diagnosis, that Marie was given last summer. Marie is 26 years old and studies biology at Aarhus University, and she has moderate ADHD. As a 25-year-old, this was both an eye-opener and a sadness.
“Getting clarity and getting an answer to what is going on in my head means that I can now complete my bachelor’s degree. Well extended by a year and a half, but now it is at least possible. I can now get medication and tools to stop the neverending cycle of highs and lows. At times I will still feel burnt out, but not to the same extent as before.”
“Getting to read the syllabus at the university is a big challenge on a daily basis. I feel that I have to fight a lot so that my thoughts don’t take me to new places. When my eyes move down over the text, a single illustration can take my focus away. Although my eyes are still reading the letters on the paper, they don’t settle because my mind has already wandered somewhere else, and I have to start over at the top of the page again. The idea of reading a text is in a way straightforward. You have to go from a to b. You have to go from the first word to the last word on the page. But with my brain, it can feel like I have to go down hundreds of different side roads before I get to b.”
Sarah has had her ADHD diagnosis since the age of four and thus it has been a familiar companion throughout her childhood. It has sometimes been her best friend and other times her worst enemy. Today, Sarah is 24 years old and studies culture, Christianity and communication at the Diakonhøjskole in Aarhus. On the side, she runs Tulipa Studio, which is a project that lies very close to heart. A project that started back in 2021 when Sarah went down with stress. Here both Sarah’s head and body gave up.
“My ADHD means that I live very much in the present moment. My ups and downs
are so intense that I can’t focus on anything else. When I’m happy, I’m in the clouds, and when I’m sad, I’m down in the dumps. But my thoughts only get real space when I stop up completely. Often more than I want to. Here my thoughts run away with me and can become eerily dark. That’s probably also why I fill up my calendar completely, so I can escape those thoughts. As you can probably hear, I almost have to fight to maintain the balance between emotions, thoughts, things I “should” do and all the fun stuff. A constant trade-off, which definitely tilts for me. It’s more a question of how much?”
Over the past 6 years, Isabella has had to give up and start over several times in the attempt to get a high school education. Today, she studies individual subjects at Aarhus HF and VUC, because this is where she can reach her dream of becoming a social worker. On a grey November day last year, Isabella was diagnosed with ADD. In the past, she has suffered from anxiety and been misdiagnosed with schizotypal mental disorder and adjustment reaction. But it wasn’t until the ADD-diagnosis was made that the weight lifted off her shoulders. At the age of 23, Isabella could breathe a sigh of relief, because now it all made sense.
“My undiagnosed ADD has stood in the way of me becoming the best version
of myself. It has stood in the way of me being able to flourish. Instead, it has planted a fundamental idea that I am inadequate in many aspects of life. But with clarity about the way my brain works, or how it sometimes doesn’t work, I can better understand myself and respect my limitations. I can now get the medication that makes my thoughts and actions run parallel to each other. My symptoms have lessened after I got an explanation. I am happy with my ADD-diagnosis and I am relieved to have that knowledge today. Instead of a constant search and yearning to have the same starting point as others, I now know that I will never have that. But that’s okay because I find another foundation to work from.”
In high school, Cecilie survived by being “the funny one”, because her studies was not going well. She compensated socially so that the others in the class did not notice. Cecilie is a girl with big arm movements and enjoys life at a high pace, and she is certainly not afraid to speak her mind. Throughout her life, it has often been “all or nothing” for her. She doesn’t approach things with half-hearted energy. Therefore, it became difficult at school to manage both her studies and social life. Today, 25-year-old Cecilie is studying dentistry at the University of Copenhagen, but now with a fresh ADHD diagnosis behind her.
“Shortly after I started studying dentistry, I realized that I was extremely challenged, and a lot more than others around me. I
couldn’t go through with this. I drowned the pressure and disappointment in parties, naively hoping for the best. But when a friend tipped me off about a podcast “Sorry, I’m interrupting”, and then the penny dropped. I was devastated and cried but now I could put a finger on it”.
“In the middle of the second semester I went on sick leave and was diagnosed with ADHD. In my journal, my psychiatrist wrote: “Rating scale for ADHD: “Patient scores very high on all symptoms”. So there was no doubt, I had ADHD, and I had it to a severe degree. The conclusion read as follows: “The patient has a chronic and lifelong ADHD disorder, which will probably require lifelong medical treatment to ensure a good level of functioning”.
On a hill, an hour away from Moldova’s border with Ukraine, at the end of a long gravel road far away from society lies Moldova’s biggest institution for adults with mental and physical disabilities. Here live approximately 300 adults with varying degrees of disabilities, outside the small village of Bădiceni in one of Europe’s poorest countries, forgotten by the government.
A temporary home
Gate guarded around the clock, this institution is supposed to be a temporary home for people, before reintegrating into society. However, the graveyard just a stone’s throw away tells another story. Large institutions remain a part of society in Moldova, even 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Despite Moldova’s efforts of deinstitutionalization in the last ten years, many people are still stuck in these large institutions without decent treatment and in conditions heavily criticized by the UN. The institution in Bădiceni is one of six remaning ones for people with disabilities.
Sharp criticism from UN
Moldova fails to live up to the UN convention they signed in 2007, ensuring the rights of disabled people. Several times the UN has strongly recommended Moldova close these remaining institutions
and urged Moldova’s government to consider that people with disabilities should be equal citizens, and should be treated as such. Over-medicating, violence and neglect of patients are some of UN’s main concerns here in Bădiceni.
The people in Bădiceni are mostly diagnosed with schizophrenia, intellectual disabilities, and dementia. Many of them have lived much of their lives in institutions, and very few have family, while those who do aren’t able to visit much.
Over the years NGOs have tried with more or less success to provide the institution with materials and resources to ensure better conditions for the people living here. Meanwhile, daily life continues in a repetitive cycle for these 300 people in Bădiceni.
Lack of rights for people with disabilities, poverty, and scarce resources in Moldova. These are some of the main reasons Elina continues to live in Bădiceni, and not with her son, who also now lives in an institution in Moldova.
There are several ways to tackle the climate crisis, and young people around Denmark are doing it differently. Some are creating new ecosystems, others are doing climate activistic rap, and then there are those who are trying to become Denmark’s first carbon negative company. What they all have in common is a concern for the future of the planet and an urge to act.
These are six stories of young people’s hope, anger and the fight for a sustainable future.
Salam Wael El Youssef is 18 years old and is a student at Nykøbing Falster Katedralskole. Earlier this year, he cofounded the Green Youth Movement South Sea Islands with some of his friends. An upcoming gas pipeline on Lolland was a catalyst for Salam to start the Lolland Falster branch.
Salam has always been good at taking responsibility and taking action. He is a member of the student council, he is involved in Grønskole, an initiative to make his high school greener, and is now running for the position of chairperson of the Danish Association of High School Students.
“My goal in life is to make the world a better place. I feel that I belong in activism. The more I read about the climate crisis, the more I wanted to do something.”
The sun shines down on the square in Nykøbing Falster. Less than a month ago, Salam and some of his friends started the Green Youth Movement South Sea Islands, and now they are holding their first demonstration. In the days leading up to it, they have been making banners and writing songs. They are demonstrating against the new gas pipeline and calling for electrification instead, and they will march from the city center down to the sugar factory, Nordic Sugar, the factory that will lay the gas pipeline. 18 people have turned up on this Saturday in March. The young people are trying hard to get passers-by to join them and are handing out flyers.
“There is a need for green communities on Lolland Falster, so that you are not alone with your thoughts, but have somewhere to go to do something about it.” Salam says.
comes blaring out of the loudspeaker. Salam is holding the microphone and is teaching the crowd the chants they can sing along to as they begin to march through the streets of Nykøbing Falster. They have agreed with the police that they will walk on the road. They do so carefully. They only block one lane of the road. They ignore the cars and they sing on through the pedestrian streets.
The demonstration ends at the sugar factory, where a short speech is made and more songs are sung, because they are allowed to make noise for another fifteen minutes. Salam stops the music, takes the microphone to his mouth, “When the earth is burning, sing along to this song.” Nik & Jay’s hit “Hot” blasts out of the speaker, and those present take one step to the right, one to the left, one up and one down for the climate.
Simon Weber Marcussen, 28, harvests seaweed and is on a mission to make his business Denmark’s first CO2 negative. The green profile is always in focus when Simon and his father, Claus Marcussen, who co-owns the company DanskTang, make decisions. Today, it is a profitable business, but it started as a business to help the climate.
They are based in Odsherred, run the business from Anneberg Kulturpark and harvest seaweed on the surrounding coasts, the Isefjord, Kattegat and Sejrøbugten.
“We always focus on sustainability. We use eelgrass instead of bubble wrap, and all excess seaweed is turned into supplements for horses.” says Simon.
He elegantly sails the rubber dinghy around
the lines he has layed and watches how they are doing. He takes out a blue bucket and starts cutting off some of the seaweed, quickly tastes it and takes what’s left back to Anneberg.
The key to becoming CO2 negative lies in the use of eelgrass, which, as well as a substitute for bubble wrap, can also be used for building materials, insulation or acoustic mats. Seaweed itself is CO2 neutral when it is eaten again. In Odsherred, 15 tons of eelgrass are brought in every day from May to December. Eelgrass that would otherwise rot and release CO2 that it has absorbed during the year. By using the eelgrass, they harvest CO2 instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.
“We want to show people that you can run a business without destroying the planet.” Simon says.
It’s the early start of the season for the couple Andreas Dalland, 28, and Sif Thieme, 26, who have their own farm in Bovense, where they grow vegetables. The sun shines gently through the clouds and warms up the large greenhouse.
They run a five-hectare farm owned by Andelsgaarde, a cooperative movement that buys old farms, builds them up and leases them for sustainable agriculture. They practice regenerative farming, which means farming that restores and prepares the land from its current state. They have been farming for one season and are getting to know their land and soil. They are creating a whole new ecosystem. In order for the bee to fertilize the flower, the flower has to be sown.
The couple met at the Folk High School in 2016 and have been together ever since. They both started at Sogn Jord- og Hagebruksskule in Norway and educated themselves as farmers. Andreas comes from a family with a proud tradition of farming, while Sif grew up in Copenhagen and she studied climate physics before becoming a farmer.
“You have a responsibility as a small human being on earth. We are focused on being able to make an agriculture and food production that does not make the earth worse for the next people. So we don’t deplete the soil and we don’t leave all kinds of crap for the future. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t spray, but we use biological processes. We make a living soil instead of just thinking of it as a growth medium. You use so many resources as a human being. So in that way we can give back. We can’t figure out how to make new titanium and new minerals, but we can figure out how to build soil.” says Sif.
“It’s not a particularly selfish project, if it was, it would be stupid. It’s a crazy job being a farmer in Denmark,” says Sif. “In many ways, we do it just as much for everyone else.” Andreas adds.
The day starts slowly at Ærø Efterskole, an independent boarding school for lower secondary students. The climate cult, as they are called by the other pupils at the school, has a class from the morning and they go around the houses to pick each other up and then walk together towards ‘The Sky’, the room on the second floor with sky-blue walls. They always pick each other up before the climate and culture lessons, which have given them a shared understanding of each other’s concerns and created close bonds.
The class always starts with a round of sharing how things are going.
Ellie talks about her climate anxiety, which
has been ravaging her body in the wake of the new climate reports. The others listen intently. Some nod in recognition.
Ærø Efterskole has a sustainable profile. It is a small school with 46 pupils. There are seven on the Climate & Culture line. Most of the students have specifically applied to the school on the island to learn more about the climate. Anna Gundersen, the teacher, makes a virtue of teaching them about the world’s problems and getting the young people to put themselves and their role in the world into perspective. They receive a broad education on what the climate crisis entails: the economic and psychological aspects, and they learn how to be farmers.
“Since I was little, I have been thinking about the climate. I’ve been scared and frightened. I’ve done some climate activism, so I thought it was a good fit for me to come to a place where there is a community around the climate.” says Lola.
We experience some of the same things when we watch the news. So it’s a good space to talk about things. I appreciate that.” Ellie adds.
After the meeting, they move into the kitchen. They go back together and divide up the tasks. They have to make vegan rice pudding, almond milk, hot chocolate and crispbread. They also have to choose seeds to germinate. Maddox disappears to find a scale and comes back with a scale and a loudspeaker and immediately the loudspeaker starts playing old hits
from before they were born. There’s a lot of whipping and a burnt smell creeps across the room. “Oops,” exclaims one of the students. “It’s all right.” says another.
They gather around the round table. Here they eat freshly baked crispbread and drink chocolate milk made from a mixture of oat and almond milk with whipped cream made from vegan cream.
“Going to school and doing math can feel completely pointless, so having climate and culture is really liberating.” Ellie says.
“We want to turn our anxiety or our feelings into action. It’s not like what we’re doing is going to reduce a lot of CO2, but you still feel like you’re doing something.” says Ida.
“Slogans on screens - polluting - my world”, the rap duo and the audience sing back and forth to each other. It is sung by MCDommedag and Klimahystaden, who write power-critical songs for climate justice.
MCDommedag and Klimahystaden are siblings from Valby, Esther and Johan Michelsen-Kjeldahl. They are 29 and 26 years old respectively. They have both been active in the climate movement and started the project in 2020.
The core of their project is to make people in the country feel that they also have a voice and that they can use it. They use their music universe to create a climate conversation that is woven into people’s lives in a new way. An intuitive project that released a lot of pent-up emotions around the climate crisis.
MCDommedag and Klimahystaden are extended versions of the siblings. Esther describes Klimahystaden as a more intense Esther with free rein, who doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. In her daily work as Esther, she is a representative of the climate movement in various radio and TV programs, where she has a different responsibility.
Johan describes himself as a person who has always done the right thing and fulfills all the demands he has been given. A hardworking and kind gentleman with an ego that tries to be in control. He describes his alter ego, MCDommedag, as a more liberated version of himself, where imperfection is welcomed with open arms.
In the heart of the meatpacking district of Vesterbro in Copenhagen, the Green Youth Movement has invited to an evening of presentations on the role of fossil fuel industry advertising in the climate crisis, and where MCDommedag and
Klimahystaden will end the session with a pre-release of their new song, “Slogans on Screens”.
“Feel the groove, get down in your hips and feel your body after all the brain pollution” says Klimahystaden to the audience.
“Have talked to a psychologist, it hurts the account, I live a little dangerously, on TV2, TV3, Plus and Charlie - Fossil industry - creates dreams in - my TV.” sings MCDommedag. The audience cheers and claps. Hands fly from side to side.
They are all high from the concert. They glance from one end of the stage to the other. They give each other a big hug.
“We take responsibility for our own grief and anger.” Esther says. “We acknowledge the feelings we have and don’t try to hide them behind rational arguments to be allowed to say something.” Johan adds.
Eva Lind Madsen was lying in bed one night, her mind was racing. She describes it as a mind trip. She was thinking about her future and the future of others, which felt like a black hole. A scary scenario of what the world will look like in 50 years.
“I am worried about the future. I really am. I think it’s because it’s so hard to comprehend what’s going to happen.” Eva says.
Eva is 19 years old and is a student at Haderslev Katedralskole. She is a climate activist and was one of the founders of the Green Youth Movement’s branch in Haderslev. Eva had two emotions when she helped start the branch in Southern Jutland: hope and anger. Hope to create a different society and anger at the lack of action from people higher up in the system.
“We started the division in Haderslev because we couldn’t help ourselves. Having this knowledge about the climate crisis, I feel a responsibility. There are people here who also have climate anxiety and an urge to act.”
The evening sun leans over the art gallery in the center of Haderslev, where the Green Youth Movement Haderslev is meeting once again. They’ve been at it for over a year now, and the meetings range from more active actions to community cultivation. In the large room with high ceilings in more than one sense, they have each brought a vegetarian dish and a board game. Spirits are high, laughter and hugs are exchanged.
“I think the community is important so that you don’t just sit around feeling sad. We all
get a place to go with our thoughts, where we can turn these frustrations or anxiety thoughts into action, instead of just feeling that we can’t do anything. Because we can.” Eva says.
Hits from the 80s fill the room and they are all gathered around the table. Tonight, they are playing ‘The Bad Company’, which is about making the others laugh by filling in the blanks of sentences. A sentence that gets loud laughs is acknowledged with snapping fingers all around.
For Eva, it’s not always about large-scale actions or demonstrations. It is just as much about having a place where she can come and vent her feelings.
“I look forward to going down every Tuesday to gather with the others.” Eva says.
Following the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab nations of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, Israel occupied most of the Palestinian land, West Bank. This would prove to be the beginning of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal according to international law. To this day, the UN and the international community condemn these settlements, and Palestinians are living in enclaves in the shadow of Israeli settlements. This has subsequently lead to weekly protests against the Israeli settlements and occupation, which often end with violent and deadly clashes between the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Palestine is not a country as we know it. Instead it is territories mostly controlled by Israel.
A Heart in The Shadow is an ongoing photographic reportage through the West Bank, where photojournalist Nichlas Pollier investigates what it means to live under occupation from mainly the Palestinian perspective.
“Calledita te ves más bonita” // “Woman, you look more beautiful when you shut up”
The words seems to be whispered in the air, in the living room, in the supermarket, in the bar, in the kitchen, in the park. Everywhere in Mexico. As always. But enough is enough, the Mexican women think.
They don’t share the same blood, yet they feel that blood connects them. And they no longer want to listen to story after story from women about sexual assault and brutal femicide. Or experience it themselves.
For too long, there has been silence. Now the women are standing together, side by side, to tell their stories and demand change in Mexico.
A chill spreads over Lizeth’s body. She raises her clenched hand in the air, her purple scarf tied around her arm. She shouts along as loud as she can, in chorus with all the other women and girls standing around her on the crowded street near the center of Mexico City:
“Calladita no me veo más bonita” / “I don’t look more beautiful when I shut up”
A memory flares through Lizeths mind. She remembers it so well.
The day she finally decided to tell her mother everything that had happened.
Lizeth wanted to tell her mother about when she was six years old and her 15-year-old cousin lured her into his room in the family house with the teddy bear she wanted most.
How he hadn’t wanted to play, but instead had taken off her dress and even her underwear underneath. How he wanted to touch her body all over.
She would tell her mother about all the times when the same thing happened over and over again.
And about that Christmas the following year when Lizeth woke up to someone touching her body again. She screamed, but fell silent when her mother’s cousin slapped her across the mouth and assured her that if she didn’t keep quiet, Lizeth’s cousin, who was lying right next to her, would be hurt.
“They abused me.”
Suddenly they are out of her mouth. The words.
“Who?” her mother asks. Her voice is cold.
Cousin, uncle, your cousin, sometimes grandmother’s husband, Lizeth stammers out.
Lizeth’s mother looks her daughter in the eyes.
“These are things you have to go through as a woman,” she says. “It’s not something you should tell anyone.”
“Won’t you help me?” Lizeth asks.
“With what?”
“I’m going to report it.”
“It won’t make any difference.”
Her mother’s words hurt.
Lizeth had tried to report it after Christmas 2016. Her uncle’s sister had also believed her and taken her to the station. But Lizeth’s mother had been right. It made no difference.
Those hired to find out what had happened simply said that she must have provoked it herself. 12-year-old Lizeth, who at that moment hated that her body had developed so early and hated that she had tried to say something.
For years she made sure not to make that mistake again. But Lizeth is now 20 years old, and she has had enough.
She no longer want to play a role in protecting those who have abused her ny keeping her mouth shut.
María was around 12 years old when she started taking the metro alone. One day, she was going to scouts with a friend. The two girls were standing in the aisle of the crowded metro carriage. Suddenly, María felt a hand firmly grab her crotch. She tried to push his hand away, but in vain. He was too strong.
Fortunately for María, people around them began to realize what was happening. They shouted at the man and pushed him out of the carriage when it stopped at the next station.
This was the day María started to have ‘awake eyes’, as she calls them. Eyes that are constantly alert to her surroundings.
Above the crowds hang large canopies of Jacaranda spring flowers, perfectly fitting with the purple that the feminist movement has adobted as their own.
The flowers provide a bit of shade for the more than 90,000 women who have come to the center of Mexico City on the international womens day the 8th of march to call for an end to violence against women in Mexico, an end to macho culture and an end to silence.
The women at the march do not stand alone with their stories. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported in 2021 that more than 70 percent of women from the age of 15 in Mexico have experienced some kind of violence, and the numbers are even higher in the capital, Mexico City, where it is 77 percent.
Every day, 10 women are killed in the country, and official figures say that about a third of these can be defined as femicide - where the murder is carried out on the basis of gender.
María Salguero Bañuelos, a Mexican geophysicist and researcher, started a project in 2016 where she created a map of femicides in Mexico that happened between 2016 to 2020. The different colors mark each year. The green crosses show the femicides committed in 2020.
“Good afternoon.”
A mixture of a chemical and rotten smell greets Estrella as she meets a white-coated man at the door. He explains to Estrella what she is about to see and what she needs to look for to judge whether it is María Fernanda lying there. Pale.
With the word ‘puta’ (Spanish for whore) marked with a knife on the forehead of her face that is cut off.
“Step back,” Estrella is told as she instinctively reaches for the dead arm.
This can’t be right.
María Fernanda, ‘Mafer’, is Estrella’s best friend, like a sister. Or she was.
Now Mafer lies dead on a metal table right in front of Estrella. With the number the coroner keeps calling her, written on a note hanging around her toe.
The naked body was found in a garbage bag on the side of the road ten days after María Fernanda’s 19th birthday, which she and Estrella had celebrated with a glass of Mezcal at a bar in the festive village of Tepoztlán.
María Fernanda’s ex-boyfriend had turned up unexpectedly at the bar with a huge bouquet of pink roses and said he had a big surprise for her saying she had follow him. He had convinced her. She got into a car with him and his two friends and they were off.
That was the last time Estrella saw María Fernanda alive.
Ni una más. Not one more. Not one more person should suffer the same fate as Mafer. Not one more person should go through what Estrella has gone through during the last four years.
This has become Estrella’s motivation.
And even though she knows that María Fernanda is far from being the first Mexican woman to be a victim of femicide, and far from being the last, she will fight.
Side by side with all the other women who, along with Estrella, are fighting the same fight for justice and the right to be a woman in the Mexican society without a constant fear of harassment, abuse, assault and death.
María Fernanda’s ex-boyfriend was sentenced to 80 years in prison. The two friends have not been found and thus have not been prosecuted. This is better than most cases, says Estrella. She explains that the only reason the case was investigated thoroughly enough to convict the ex-boyfriend was because María Fernanda’s father has good contacts in the Mexican justice system.
LIV LATRICIA HABEL
For the past two years the Ghanaian parliament has been processing an anti LGBTQ bill, intending to fight homosexuality. The implementation of the bill would outlaw any sympathy for the LGBTQ community. Individuals could spend up to five years in jail for showing affection in public. Gay Rights advocates could face up to ten years of imprisonment. Stigmatization and discrimination are growing both politically and socially. The number of arrests and violent attacks on members of the LGBTQ community and
organizations working for the cause has increased, forcing community members to take personal safety measures when moving in public spaces. Only a handful of the community members can imagine their future unfolding in their home country.
At the same time, daily life proceeds. The queer community continues to fall in love, get engaged, organize parties, find solace and resistance amongst chosen families, and form collectives fighting for their right to stand their ground and determine their futures.
Dorothy has always been interested in sports and is good at it, too. It was a gift from God. No matter if its Rugby, Soccer or Basketball, when Dorothy plays on the field, he feels free and weightless. No one can judge him here and all worries disappear.
Working out is woven into Dorothy’s identity. So is the masculine appearance. Dorothy’s father doesn’t mind him dressing in a masculine way. He defends Dorothy every time people comment on his appearance: “That’s just the way she is.”
Dorothy says nobody would guess his sexuality without knowing, still he has heard of Oba Baarima. Back in the days when somebody was called Oba Baarima,
it was an expression for a physically strong female, like Dorothy. Now the Twi expression has a negative connotation and is used by people as a slur.
“Every gay girl or boy in Ghana would like to travel outside of this country to be free. Just to have the experience of walking outside freely, dress like a girl or dress like a boy, without anyone questioning them. Without anyone attacking them. I love my country, but this is too much.” - Dorothy, 23.
Since last year, Roland has had her own salon. Her work liberates her, it helps her to heal and gives her a sense of belonging.
“I don’t know what I would do without hair. This makes me happy. This gives me joy. Seeing people beautiful all the time. You get it,” says Roland.
Doing hair brought her closer to selfacceptance, too. Aged 19, after her parents refused to accept her sexuality, Roland left her family home in Abuja, Nigeria. At that time, she was experienced enough to provide for herself by doing hair and so she moved to Lagos. Managing her skills as a hairdresser gave Roland a ticket to independence. In 2018, she was offered a hair gig in Accra, where she has been since. Though Roland is happy in her
salon, the safety she feels within it doesn’t expand beyond its four walls. In five to ten years’ time, Roland sees herself owning a salon in the US, Canada or Germany. A place where she wouldn’t need to lock the doors because of her sexuality.
“I love everything about queerness. The colors. The love. The community and the confidence we have. But not in Africa. We don’t live to the fullest until we leave to a place, where we are being accepted.”- Roland, 28.
In 2018, 18 years old and while living under her mother’s roof, Destiny gave birth to her son Abdi Malik. Shortly after, Destiny met a new friend, which grew into a romantic relationship. The friend took her to a gay party, the likes of which Destiny had never been to before, and which promptly got raided by the police. Destiny and her friends were taken to the police station, where they were held in jail for a whole week. “From that day on I knew, this is who I am, and I can’t keep on hiding myself,” says Destiny.
When Destiny’s family found out about her sexuality, she had to move out and they did not let her take Abdi Malik with her, but she still sees him from time to time. Instead, Destiny has found family in other spaces. A friend who was renting a compound house offered Destiny to stay with her. Over time, this friend has become a queer mom to Destiny.
“People normalize the fact that it’s okay for their partners to beat them. It’s okay for their partners to be violent. It’s okay for people to talk to them anyhow, just because they are queer.” - Leila, 30.
Together with four other Muslim queer people, Leila founded the NGO OneLoveSisters in 2017. The organization is one of many, which the possible anti LGBTQ bill threatens to proscribe. OneLoveSisters is specifically aimed at Queer Muslims, focusing on LBQTI people, and supports members through educational programs, psychological healing sessions and sexual reproductive health rights awareness, amongst others. Since OneLoveSisters started a genderbased violence hotline operation last year, the organization has also been one of the only ones to keep track of the numbers of violent attacks on LGBTQ people in Ghana. They receive reports of attacks daily and the variety spans from arbitrary arrests over intimate partner abuse to corrective rape.
OneLoveSisters is now running consent workshops to educate the community and create a safe space for the members to understand that abuse of any kind is nothing to be normalized. “We have to relearn, unlearn and shift the table for people to speak up about what they are going through,” says Leila. Being Muslim, queer, and a survivor of sexual abuse themselves, Leila’s work comes from a place of passion.
“Girl. You are you. There is nothing wrong with you.”
Born into a family of artists, Mimi always expressed herself through her creativity. In her twenties, Mimi moved to Atlanta, USA, to study Fashion Design, but later she shifted to visual arts, as it allowed her to express herself. While in Atlanta, Mimi read an article by Janet Mock, an American writer and trans activist. That’s when Mimi realized that she was born to be Mimi –not Michael. Over the next six years, Mimi began discovering herself, “I remember the first time I braided my hair. The first time I painted my nails, bought heels, went out in feminine clothes. Went on a date in it.”
“I remember before I turned 13, when I went to boarding school. I was lying in bed and praying I would wake up and be a different gender, because I felt so limited and so out of touch with my surroundings. I was in the boy’s dorm, and I always felt
more alienated by what I was supposed to be. I always felt that incarnation,” says Mimi.
Looking back, Mimi wishes for her younger self to be more bold and less apologetic. For so long she felt she had to apologize for something. “I made sure I was walking with my head down and people would be like: You’re like a girl. And although it was meant in a negative way, I always felt affirmed by that. I felt like I had to show that I don’t like that. In my reaction, my sadness wasn’t real. But if I did it enough, then it felt real. I had to feel ashamed about it.”
Looking at herself now, Mimi doesn’t feel ashamed: “Girl. You are you. There is nothing wrong with you.”
When Rebekah moved to Ghana in December 2021, she hadn’t experienced living in her motherland as an adult. Although she felt called to move, she was missing the community and support system she had had back home in England. The lack of communal spaces and a demand for safer spaces for women and nonbinary people, made Rebekah form the collective Afrodite and Friends in 2022.
That same year, Rebekah’s partner Eni moved to Ghana. The couple had to get used to not showing affection in public and that was having an impact on their relationship. They felt, their relationship was being invalidated all the time and questioned if it could blossom in Ghana.
At the same time, they started building a community around Afrodite and Friends and the couple realized how important it was for them to be around people who acknowledged their relationship as real.
Last year in October, Eni proposed to Rebekah and she said yes.
“To validate your relationship, you do in a way need external validation from the community you are around. I noticed, that because of the people and spaces we hang around with, I don’t feel the same way I did when I came. It really matters who you are spending time with.” - Rebekah, 30
On the west coast of Jutland, they are used to the roar of the waves just beyond the dunes. They are used to watching the sun set into the endless sea. They are used to using the nature on their doorstep as a sanctuary and pantry, for grazing and hunting, but now an invisible threat has forced them to deal with nature in a new way.
In spring 2022, high levels of toxic PFAS substances were found at an abandoned landfill south of Thyborøn. The substances are suspected of having serious health consequences and have since been found in groundwater, surface water, grass, soil, animals and sea foam along the entire west coast. In particular, the findings in the light, fine sea foam attracted attention when PFAS concentrations up to 3000 times higher than the Danish Environmental Protection Agency’s guideline value for bathing water were measured.
Can the winter bathers enjoy an ice-cold dip knowing there is more than just salt in the water? How long can we continue to drink our water directly from the ground? And what does the farmer do when the cows cannot be slaughtered and sold?
Anyone living near the North Sea knows that a good windy day brings large collections of airy sea foam on wave tops, on the beach and in the air. However, the new knowledge is that despite its innocent appearance, the sea foam contains very high concentrations of PFAS - much higher than the water, sand and grass it has been found near.
The physico-chemical properties of PFAS mean that they are best found at the interface between air and water. Where PFAS is found in seawater, concentrations are lowest in subsurface water, higher at the surface and highest in the airy sea foam, which has plenty of surface area for the substances to settle.
Once the sea foam is formed and filled with PFAS, the wind does not stop. It blows on and carries the foam as small particles over the dunes and into meadows and fields, where it settles and is absorbed by the soil and grass.
PFAS is not acutely toxic like fly agarics and rat poison, but because it can accumulate in the body over a long period of time, it can have a number of health consequences.
Several studies show that high levels of PFAS in the body can result in a weakened immune system and an increased risk of cancer, among other things. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the health effects, which is why many research projects are underway that will shed more light on the matter in the coming years.
Between ocean and fjord, along dunes and lakes, the cows are part of the nature management that promotes varied living conditions for flora and fauna. But in the fall of 2022, PFAS was found in both grass and cattle on Agger Tange, and farmer Thyge Futtrup is therefore not allowed to slaughter the animals until the levels of the harmful substances are down to the permitted level - probably after a year and a half.
“To be honest, they should have been shot when we got that message. It would have been much cheaper for us,” says Thyge Futtrup. Right now, the cows are just an expense with no chance of making money for the farmer in the near future.
“We want to be able to run this farm so we can make a little profit - so it’s no good we lose money because someone accidentally spilled some PFAS out there into the nature.”
Even though the wind speed has reached 13 meters per second, the cold water is almost completely flat when the eight morning swimmers arrive at the beach with hats, gloves and bathing shoes. There is always someone ready to swim when someone asks in the Facebook group.
69-year-old Maja Hestbech winter swims because she feels balanced - indeed, all problems vanish into thin air when she sinks into the cool sea water. And when the ‘PFAS’ issue hit the media, she remembers having to stop and investigate what it meant.
“For me, it was a trade-off between the quality of life I get from winter swimming and the potential small health risk PFAS poses. It was not a difficult choice,” says Maja Hestbech. “If you have to stop doing everything that involves a risk, you can’t do anything in this world.”
He actually retired in 2015 after a working life that included titles such as fisherman, local politician and social worker. Nevertheless, 72-year-old Bjarne Hansen is now a full-time environmentalist. His father, Aage Hansen, also known as RavAage, is recognized as Denmark’s first environmental activist, when he fought against the chemical factory Cheminova’s pollution on Harboøre Tange and in the sea in the 1950s. It is this battle Bjarne Hansen continues to fight today, and now PFAS has also appeared on his radar.
“My theory is that the PFAS comes from the old pollution that exists where the factory is located today,” he says.
And there may be something to that. In the summer of 2022, three samples of the treated wastewater discharged by Cheminova into the North Sea showed PFAS in concentrations up to 14 times higher than the Danish groundwater quality standard and 318 times higher than a groundwater quality standard the EU is working on.
“They clean some of it away and discharge the remaining wastewater into the North Sea, where it can be diluted. That’s the thinking. And then they can’t understand that it flies right back in their faces with the sea foam when it is windy.”
The west wind blows it inland. It is in the grass. In the soil. In pesticides spread over conventional fields. And now it has also been found in groundwater in many parts of Denmark.
Three kilometers from the waves of the North Sea lies Engbjerg Waterworks, one of about 3000 major waterworks in Denmark. Previously, the boreholes at the site reached 60 meters into the subsoil, but when the waterworks was to be expanded four years ago, it was decided to drill 220 meters into the ground to find clean water. It’s all about safety. Safety from the pollutants that have accumulated in nature in recent decades and are slowly seeping down towards the aquifers.
The fluorinated PFAS substances have so far only been found in samples close to the surface of the ground around the country - though not in the vicinity of Engbjerg Waterworks’ wells. But the lack of research in this area leaves many questions. How quickly does PFAS seep through topsoil, sand and gravel? How much of it degrades on the way? Is drinking water at risk right now? What about in 10 years?
Albert Jensen, Development Manager at Lemvig Vand, is quite confident when it comes to safeguarding the water they send out to 11,000 households from Engbjerg Waterworks.
“We choose the location of the wells so that we don’t have sand and gravel over the aquifers,” he says. This is because the structure of sand and gravel leaves a lot of microscopic cavities in the subsoil, through which contaminated water can easily move.
The waterworks’ wells, on the other hand, lie under a 60-meter-thick layer of clay, which slows down whatever might get down there. In addition, there are monthly laboratory tests and the ability to filter the
water with activated carbon before it is sent out through the plant’s piping systems.
“But the risk of PFAS getting into the aquifer at all is non-existent as it is right now,” says Albert Jensen.
EMIL BAY GREGERSEN
MARTIN THOMAS FORD
ROSALINE BEN-BARUCH LANGE
REBECCA HELENE HOFFMANN
MARIA HØY HANSEN
AXEL EMIL HAMMERBO
NICHLAS POLLIER
EMILIE TOLDAM
LIV LATRICIA HABEL
RASMUS H. BREUM
The stories have been made during a seven-weeks workshop in the spring 2023. The students have researched, worked in field for three weeks and finally written and edited their stories. The workshop has been conducted by journalism teacher Gitte Luk and photojournalism teacher Søren Pagter. The students themselves have designed the final exhibition at Copenhagen Photo Festival 2023.
© 2023 Photojournalists
© 2023 Danish School of Media and Journalism
Published by DMJX Photojournalism
Cover photo by Rosaline Ben-Baruch Lange
Printed at LaserTryk
Printed in Denmark 2023
Thanks to:
Copenhagen Photo Festival 2023
Aarhuus Stiftstidendes Fond
Søren Pagter, Head of DMJX Photojournalism
Gitte Luk, Guest teacher DMJX Journalism
In particular a huge thanks to everyone, who shared their story.
