Henrik Saxgren

ULTIMA THULE

The planet has existed for more than 4.5 billion years, mankind for less than 200,000 years. In that perspective we are a very small hiccup. The planet calves its icebergs and freezes the seas to ice when it suits it. It lets the storms rage and the cold bite when it suits it. It is the planet that sets the conditions. If we want to be here, we have to adapt – or be crushed. How small we are in this game can be experienced most intensely in the Arctic. The people who have settled just beneath the North Pole know and live with the forces of nature. They know their place in the hierarchy and adapt in the awareness that their destruction is always a possibility. Every day they must conquer the fear of the ruthlessness of the landscape and make their way out into it. Every day they must show heroism. It is this dance on the edge of annihilation that is so alluring. Where the end is close at hand, the heroes are made. And the hunters in Thule are heroes.

Historically, Ultima Thule has been a concept for ‘the northernmost boundary with the end of the world’. For more than 200 years artists, writers, scientists and adventurers have felt the attraction of life on this boundary. I am just one in this succession and my contribution is modest. I do not add anything crucially new, but have taken on an obligation: the obligation to continue the tradition in which artists contribute to the exploration and documentation of life in Arctic Greenland. I too have felt the allure, just like others before me. Fascinated by the drama, attracted by the myths and, at the personal level, intent on testing my own courage – overcoming my own fear. I cannot take the liberty of calling my journeys scientific, and yet anthropology has played a prominent role in my method.

Altogether I have spent more than six months in the Thule region, spread over six journeys. I have spent much of that time with the hunters on the sea ice. It has been a great challenge both mentally and physically. But also a unique experience. Yet however troublesome it has been, I have continued. The thought that others before me have made far greater sacrifices in quite inconceivably harsh conditions has prompted a humility in me – and incited me to continue. The coveted bonus has been that I have created new pictures that can supplement the narrative of the Arctic and contribute to our collective consciousness of being human. And then my pictures will be an important document that risks being the last record of the life lived by what may be the last generation of hunters on the sea ice of Thule, hunting and catching the great sea mammals, like their ancestors before them – several hundred, even a thousand years ago.

Solomons House

Published by Aperture, USA (2000) –
Danish edition by Gyldendal, Denmark
 DK title: Landet uden fædre.

-Saxgrens powerful photographs ask us to examine the pain of an entire generation of children at risk. In the end I would say that these pictures obligate us to respond, to do more than simply stare.
They demand that we look for an answer.
– Bianca Jagger
Human right activist.

Text by Henrik Saxgren:
My work in Nicaragua began in the eighties during a period of revolution and war.
When I returned to Nicaragua in 1994, the number of street kids in the capital shocked me. During revolutionary times, when USA did all they could to prevent the social experiment to succeed, the majority of Nicaraguans was left in hopeless poverty. But even then, they mannage to maintain a sense of pride and dignity.
In the middle ninetys people seemed poorer than during the revolution, and they no longer carried that sense of dignity.
Neighbors disregarded their neighbors. Familiar standards of decent behavior were no longer prevalent. Groups of young street girls were living with poor old men in the shantytown homes. Twelve and thirteen-year-old girls paid rent to sixty-year-old men with sex.
Neighbors and the authorities did not intervene because they simply did not care. I was very upset by these conditions, and I could not understand how they had deteriorated so badly.

It took me four years to realize that Nicaragua had become a country without fathers. The poor Nicaraguan men had little social energy left. Only on time in this century they had taken full responsibility as fathers, husbands and men.

During the revolution, these men gave themselves in for a dream. For a short moment (in historical terms) they actually believed, they could build a society without poverty for their children. But as the revolution failed, they felt betrayed. Today it seems that little social responsibility
remains. This social disillusion marks all members of society, especially the poorer men.

Poverty is a serious killer, but this is not the sole cause of Nicaraguan woes.
Conditions are not as severe in other third world countries, even though poverty is comparative.
The absence of fathers seems specific conspicuous in Nicaragua and this causes confused, divided, and broken families.
Public assistance is unavailable. Single mothers run the majority of
families without any opportunities for employment, and many only see one way to secure the little income they can find by means of prostitution.
So how do the young grow up in a society where prostitution relates to
responsibility?
A society where mothers disregard their partners’ sexual abuse of their
daughters for fear of losing the men.
My book, SOLOMONS HOUSE, work up this questions and put the church on trial.

Point of View
Published by Gyldendal in Denmark (1996)
 and by APERTURE in USA (1998)

In contemplating Henrik Saxgrens photography you lose the limitation of your sense of self and experience that of other. It is both humbling and exalting, for this great photographer leads you through aspects of people coming to terms with life. He discovers them in the images he captures world-wide in places and circumstances which need no caption, and provide a profound interpretation. This achievement is reached not with a cold lens but with a respectful acceptance of both the horrors that are endured and the pleasure that are indulged.
–Nadine Gordimer
Nobel Prize-winning author

My Goal for my projects is to inform – and perhaps influence – public opinion. I know that Henrik Saxgrens goals is the same. His images are powerful, his vision is in-depth and spring from within.
–Sebastiáo Salgado, photographer.

Pylonia

the mental bridge is at least as important as the one of concrete and steel, and it is interesting (and encouraging) to follow Henrik Saxgrens description of how the bridge came about, because he has a sense for its spiritual or metapsysical dimension.
–Klaus Rifbjerg, Danish author.