PORCELAIN SOULS – Inuuteq Storch
Exhibition in Atrium featuring photos and material from Inuuteq Storch‘s archive book project Porcelain Souls (2018)
For Porcelain Souls, Storch has gone through his parents’ archives and found photos and letters from their lives in Greenland and Denmark in the 1960s and 80s. The photographs alternate between magnificent sceneries of the Greenlandic landscape as well as portraits of friends and family as the camera comes close. In the shift between the two photographic grips, Storch emphasizes the many different layers that life in Greenland contains. He refers both to the important link between people and nature, as well as to the strong feeling family unity, that exists through generations.
Photographer Inuuteq Storch grew up in Greenland in the 1990s and most of his photographic work involves investigations of his nationality and cultural roots. Storch has studied photography at Fatamorgana in Copenhagen and at International Center of Photography in New York. He has published several photo books and his work has been exhibited in the US, Columbia, Greenland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
In his own words
I realized that the written history of Greenland is mostly written by foreigners and most of the photos taken back then were taken by foreigners.
Theoretically, with no other questions, we are receiving the correct information, but like in chemistry, theory and practical exercises will never give the same information, because every situation has a way to lose or gain information in a way that we can not control.
This situation is like that too, we can not control another person’s fascination and focus when writing about Greenland, we can not tell how the language boundaries changed the relation of what is going on and what is written.
We can not control the photographer’s view and the idea of what should be included in the photos.
I came up with the idea that I want to minimize those fouls by collecting photos from families, friends, locals and show their everyday life. Let their own history become a reachable Greenlandic history in a book form.
Photos are from a specific time in Greenlandic history, when the development of own government movement was happening and become the reality. At the same time, the development of modern life was raising with education and society has entered globalisation.
Letters are from the mid-80s and they include different information about everyday life at a personal level, which includes everyday activities, feelings and relationship between my parents.
-Inuuteq Storch about his book Porcelain Souls (2018)
