Fishing trawlers journey via frigid seas. Clouds roll over craggy mountains and cliffside villages. Clothes and boots are stained with the blood of slaughtered livestock and marine animals. Well-used instruments cling from the partitions of conventional wood buildings.
“I’m not a landscape photographer but, just like when I portray people, when I photograph a landscape, I look for mood,” Gjestvang stated throughout a video interview. “I try to think about the landscape as also kind of a portrait, or something that express feelings, somehow.”
Faroe Islander Hjalmar is pictured whereas slaughtering sheep on a farm within the village of Kaldbaksbotnur. Credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
Young girls, in the meantime, usually select to review or work in Copenhagen (the Faroe Islands are a part of the Kingdom of Denmark) or elsewhere in Europe.
Gjestvang additionally captured the rugged geography of the Faroe Islands. Credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
This quantity could not appear enormous, however with the 17 inhabited islands solely house to round 53,000 individuals — and the gender hole extra pronounced amongst youthful adults — it poses vital societal implications. Faroese Prime Minister Aksel V. Johannesen stated “skewed gender demographics” have been amongst his authorities’s “greatest challenges” upon first taking workplace in 2015.
For Gjestvang, this dynamic provided an “an interesting opportunity to do a project on men,” she stated. “As a female photographer, I get commissioned a lot to do women’s health stories, and women’s issues — which are very important — but I was curious to turn my camera in a different direction.”
Evolving masculinity
A carpentry workshop within the capital Tórshavn. Credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
The photographer stated the dearth of girls was not evident within the Faroese capital, Tórshavn, although it grew to become “quite visible” when touring to smaller villages. The social lives of those coastal communities usually revolve round harbors, and he or she hung out visiting the casual assembly locations the place males “hang out, have beers and talk.”
But Gjestvang’s delicate portraits additionally provide a candid snapshot of males in their very own houses. Several are captured sitting or mendacity alone on sofas, whereas others are pictured with pets or feminine family members. In accompanying interviews, a few of which in her e book, her topics opened up concerning the realities of life in a male-dominated society. “I pray to God that I will find a wife,” one single man instructed her. “But maybe he doesn’t hear me.”
The photographer believes, nevertheless, that many of the males she documented weren’t lonely — thanks, partially, to the close-knit nature of Faroese households. As one 40-year-old instructed her: “Strong family ties become a substitute. I already have a family myself, even though I don’t have a wife and children. When you have an extended, close-knit family, you have the freedom to be yourself and find peace with that.”
“One man I interviewed told me that the Faroe Islands is the perfect playground for men,” the photographer added, explaining her e book’s title. (“Atlantic Cowboy” is a time period borrowed from a 1997 e book of the identical identify and later utilized by Firouz Gaini, a professor of anthropology on the University of the Faroe Islands who has studied the nation’s gender dynamics and wrote a foreword for Gjestvang.)
“It’s a place where you can and fish and be outdoors and the freedom is endless, somehow,” Gjestvang stated.
Faroe Islander Fróði rests on the carcass of a pilot whale after a “grindadráp,” or whale hunt, a controversial custom that usually sparks international outrage. Credit: Andrea Gjestvang/GOST Books
Decades of lop-sided demographics have in the meantime contributed to a nationwide id that continues to have a good time virtues of power and fortitude, the photographer added.
“To be strong, and to provide for yourself and your family has been an important value,” she stated. “The idea of the strong man is very present, and you can see it … This kind of masculinity has gained a lot of respect, and has been sought-after.
“I feel this has, after all, affected society, regardless that I’ll say that Faroese girls are additionally very sturdy — they’re robust, too.”
Source: www.cnn.com