Ditte Haarlov Johnsen

Maputo Diary 2000-2013

[ EPF 2014 FINALIST ]

I grew up in Mozambique. My parents moved there just after independence, drawn by an atmosphere of hope and confidence in the future. At my kindergarten I would stand on the roof shouting long live Frelimo, the liberation party, and down with the armed bandits. Already then the civil war was catching on.

My childhood was spent roaming around the streets with friends; there were no cars driving as fuel was impossible to get. I was just as good a dancer as any of the other kids on my block, but still I longed to belong for real. Unlike the others, I didn’t have a family member that had been killed in the war. My parents had chosen to come there; and they could just as easily choose to leave again.

As a teenager I moved back to Denmark with my father. My mother and youngest sister stayed in Maputo. Since then I’ve spent summers in Maputo. It was one of these summers when I took my first photo course.

 

 

In 2000 I met two young men on the street. They were clearly homosexual, and it was the first time in my life that I had seen it so openly out on the streets of Maputo. The next two weeks were spent with Ingracia and Antonieta, and their intimate circle of friends. I scratched the surface of their lives; the Sisters, they called themselves. It became a photo series; and without me knowing it at the time, it was also the start of Maputo Diary. Over the years I returned and kept on photographing the Sisters. We became part of each other’s lives. Many have died along the way. And the pictures became more and more about my own life in Maputo.

Since its vulnerable and innocent beginning, Maputo Diary has become a monument over life lived between different cultures, friendships and people that are no longer here. With my pictures I get under the skin of people who live their lives in hardship. With my camera I insist on intimacy in the pain. When death is omnipresent life shines sharp and intensely.
Maputo Diary consists of approximately 80 images and text.

 

 

Bio

EDUCATION
2003 – 2007 – Director for Documentary Film, The National Film School of Denmark.
1999 – 2000 – Fatamorgana, Danish School of Art Photography.
1998 – 1999 – School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto.
1998 – Centro de Formacao Fotografica, Maputo.
1997 – 2001 – BA in Communication Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark.

EXHIBITIONS
2013 – ‘Maputo Diary’, Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen.
2012 – ‘Maputo Diary’, Galleri Image, Aarhus, Denmark.
2011 – ‘Maputo Diary’, ARS11, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.
2010 – ‘Maputo Diary’, FotoFestiwal, Lodz, Poland.
2007 – ‘International Womens Art Festival’, Aleppo, Syria.
2006 – ‘Sisters – Video Me’, NGBK, Berlin.
2006 – ‘African Diary’, The Odense Photo Triennial, Denmark.
2003 – ‘Making Eyes’, Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen.
2003 – ‘Manas’, A.M.F. Gallery, Maputo.
2003 – ‘Sisters’, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg.
2002 – ‘Play Works’, Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen.

 

Related links

Haarlov Johnsen, Ditte