photographed victims of torture in
Syria, I’ve documented things that are
much worse than natural death.
Most of the people I’ve photo-
graphed for the project died naturally.
I think death is peaceful. All the peo-
ple I’ve seen through this project who
were dead have seemed very peaceful.
There is a thing that happens when
you look away from death and almost
pretend it is not happening. We live
in a world where we don’t want to die,
with no religion and no afterlife – that
this is the end and we only have this
very short time on the Earth, and for
that reason we’re very afraid of facing
our own mortality. Most of the places
I’ve been travelling to, they believe in
a kind of afterlife – they believe that
death is a passage from one place to
another, it’s a transition. Life is not
ending, we just have a period of time
on Earth before the transition.
Upernavik, Greenland. North of the Arctic
Circle the soil is too hard to bury the dead.
Instead, they are laid to rest in concrete
and stone-covered coffins above ground.
Often these coffins face the ocean, so that
the dead sealers can watch their former
hunting ‘grounds’. Photo: Klaus Bo.