Eine Klage-Welt

My photos tell about a modern person, who is totally lost in her traditional Lappish environment. She doesn’t understand her position. She walks on the mountains following the footsteps of her ancestors, reindeer breeders. The movement continues, but the frame of reference is different. Some of the pictures have been taken in Fiord Varang in Norway. That’s the place where the first inhabitants of Northern Scandinavia, the Sámi people, arrived some 10,000 years ago. They were nomads, who wandered over the country, looking for game. Where the Sámi huts stood before, oil tanks of multinational oil companies rise today. The deep connection between man and nature belonged to the traditional Sámi way of life. The Sámi didn’t look at the landscape, rather they were in the landscape, a part of it. At present, this connection has been broken or weakened at least. In modern life, people need different means than in ancient societies and in the woods and the deserts. New species have been born; species of modern nomads who wander from one country to another, looking for meaning, without any ties anywhere.

--Marja Helander