Raw, Torn Love Jacob Aue Sobols book is a unique collection of photographs and memories of a lost time. – A tribute to love, not just to Sabine the woman , but also to East Greenland . by Tine Bryld In the spring of year 2000 a young man of 23 chooses to travel to the end of the world, East Greenland, to photograph the small settlement of Tiniteqilaaq, ‘The strait that runs dry at low tide' Today, three years later we understand, that the decision to venture into the unknown, was the right one. I met the photographer once, when he presented his first pictures in the National Museum of Photo Art in Copenhagen. A small collection of photographs of a young woman from East Greenland with menstrual blood running down her leg. A picture of love, that was so different from others. A raw beauty, naked in a white landscape. A beautiful woman with a round stomach, strong arms and soft folds in her stomach beneath her breasts. Today the book and the love is ours. In a country with a culture, that still exists in the smallest communities. And the stomach contracts in longing for the simple life, where man and nature are joined, as long as man survives. And that is what they do, the people from Greenland in the small settlements, where there is great poverty, but also dependence upon each other, because no one knows what tomorrow may bring. Jacob Aue Sobol falls in love with Sabine, the woman, which makes him return and live among her relatives. Which means most of the settlement of 150 people. Is it love that makes Jacob undergo training to become a hunter and a fisherman, is it the young woman who teaches him Greenlandic, or is it his longing to find a meaning in life that brings him to the outermost place, Denmark's old colony, the US' shield against what we call the civilized world? Sabine is the main character in the photographer's reassessment of his own life. He is crazy about her, takes pictures of her, that look like the country she is a part of, the prey her family in generations have shot, pulled from the sea, ripped, eaten and warmed themselves at. Sabine is also a young Greenlandic woman, who dreams of the same
as other young people do, who plays bingo because it is where you meet each other, who dances to feel her youth and love. Jacob writes about his love: “I've often watched Sabine dance at the village hall without wanting to join in. But now that we're alone in her uncle's house I surrender to both the dance and Sabine. We dance across tables, chairs and mattresses. Wilder and wilder. Through the open window we can hear the church bell chime, but Sabine insists “Aamma, aamma, qilinnermud ilinniardiiatsiikkid. More, more. Let me teach you how to dance!” I don't know if she teaches him to dance, but she teaches him to see, to go to the limit, like once when he was overpowered by desperation and wanted to leave the settlement, to the larger town Tasiilaq. After two days through tough terrain he reaches the town, but his longing for the well known, the intimacy he felt with the families in the settlement makes him return home. A dangerous trip, where he looses his tracks and walks endlessly in the meter high snow and remembers stories about people who left the settlement and never returned. At worst he can be caught in a Piteraq (the feared storm only found in East Greenland) or totally loose orientation and get lost, away from familiar mountain peaks. After two days, when he finally nears the settlement, he is met by a hunter with his sledge dogs “He looks at me and can see I've seen him.»Tsumud? Where are you going?»Diilerilaamud. To Tiniteqilaaq«, I reply. »Ulaqqingiililerpaalid. They have been waiting for you for a long time.” That is about the closest we come to the difference between Danish culture and that of Greenland. How our language is superfluous and necessary. We have to give up with all our words and explanations. Yet we cannot do without. For that our lives are too complicated, and maybe that is what Jacob fled from. And now he is back with the most beautiful pictures and memories from a lost time, a tribute of love, not only to Sabine, but also to East Greenland. No one with their heart and their head at the right place should keep themselves from this unique book of pictures and words.