Every week, starting this very second, we’ll post artwork by our favourite Scandinavian artists and have them let us into the details on how the images came about. First out is photojournalist Camilla Stephan. Besides being a super cute Dane with Inuit blood who kicks our asses at drinking and eating humongous cinnamon buns, she’s given us great Greenlandic stories like Sittin’ On Top Of The World and An Arctic Wave Of Teenage Suicide. We spoke to her about some of her favourite pictures.
I took this picture [above] on my way to visit a Lebanese family who’d just returned to their apartment after being forced to leave their home and everything they owned. The streets of Beirut were filled with soldiers and tanks and I’d been told not to take pictures. All of a sudden I saw an innocent little boy walking right by a huge tank. I only got to take three pictures then some soldier dude ran towards me. I pulled my stupid tourist act, which worked like a charm and instead of getting thrown in jail and have my camera smashed I walked away with one of my best pictures.
This is one of my favourite pictures. The little Greenlandic girl is called Malaviak and she lives in the northernmost city in the world, only 650 people live here. It was her third birthday and she wore a white shirt, pearls, and a beautiful homemade hat. I had to go down on my knees to get in the same height as her and I remember the smell of seal meat soup cooking in the kitchen. It’s a tradition that whenever someone has a birthday you put up a note in the city’s only shop to invite everyone round. People showed up with coins or candy to give to the birthday girl.
I took this picture at a zombie crawl night in Copenhagen. A zombie crawl is when hundreds of people dress up as zombies and go to as many bars as possible to drink as much as possible. I got some great pics that night, especially from when a bunch of zombies decided to go shopping in a local supermarket. Never in my life have I seen such a confused cashier. Great fun.
To see more of Camilla’s pictures from Greenland and a bunch of other stuff, click here.
Reader Comments
February 27th, 2009
10:45 pm
zombie crawl!!!! brilliant! why dont these exist in the states?!
February 27th, 2009
10:46 pm
this is frustrating! she keeps talking about all the other pictures she took which were “the best” but she didn’t include them! I wanna seeee
February 27th, 2009
10:46 pm
where are the rest of the zombies? and maybe they should call it the zombie stumble. that would make more sense. like they should have everyone walk all zombie-like between the bars, drooling and everything. that would be the only way i’d ever do a bar crawl.
February 27th, 2009
10:46 pm
there WAS a zombie crawl in New York, around halloween. I remember walking in Union Square and seeing hordes of preteen boys running around with fake blood.
February 27th, 2009
10:47 pm
dude even zombified his briefcase. that’s dedication to a theme night right there.
February 27th, 2009
10:47 pm
the descriptions on the photos make me feel warm inside, even though she’s talking about tanks and children of war.
kudos!
February 27th, 2009
10:48 pm
There’s a crawl in Portland, Oregon every year right around Oct 30th. Be there
March 1st, 2009
9:10 am
zombie crawl sounds lame and something which bring me the horizon would do
March 2nd, 2009
10:02 am
part of me kind of wants to fuck that zombie..
March 3rd, 2009
3:19 pm
That little girl is so fucking cute. You’d have to be dead or a Nazi to think otherwise.