Black Sea People

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Thursday, August 25, 2011 | 5 photos

My name is Lars and I study photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. You should choose me because my childhood dream always have been to shoot for National Geographic.

My travel on the north-east coast of the Black Sea was an attempt to restart myself in traditional photography. In the studies of photojournalism, I am taught to create pictures that tell the story as clearly as possible. In Denmark that means color. I've felt for some time, that I needed to go back to the start of photography. To b/w, 50mm and a long depth of field. To create pictures with a strong visuel impact, but also pictures that - opposite to what I do in school, doesn't reveal themselves, doesn't serve a story at first glance, but created curiosity in the viewer. For that reason I spend my summer vacation traveling from Athens to Tbilisi and back again.

The region of the south-east coast (Turkey and Georgia) have always looked west. From the early days of Ottoman expansion, to the recent approach towards the EU by Turkey, and towards NATO by Georgia. But under the surface of high politics, internal tensions and unseen tendencies are moving the people of the Black Sea in the opposite direction. For Turkey the EU seems as a Christian club, and with the recent war against Russia, Georgian dreams of NATO membership disappeared.

When traveling you see goodwill and hospitality, but also a sadness that in some way resembles the old songs of the Ottomans, singing of the longing to the road going west. It is hidden, a thing that evades the eye, and leaves you with a feeling that behind the smiling facade something sad is hiding.

I tried to catch this feeling in my photos. To tell the story of the movement, but to do it by creating visual curiosity. And to not reveal too much.