Living without knowing

Living without knowing Henrik Nor-Hansen by Henrik Nor-Hansen | Make Your Own Book

This is the second book from our stay in Alaska. Please view in fullscreen.

Night photography

Our stay in Nome, Alaska, was way too short. I walked around for hours every night, trying to photograph as much as possible.

Then it struck me that houses really looked different when people sleep. The houses seemed more vulnerable. There was even intimacy. And the more intimate it felt, the creepier I become. 

I wished people somehow could project their dreams on the walls outside. But I just snapped a pic- ture and quickly moved on. 

Angry man

Suddenly a man tore up the door and asked why the fuck I was taking pictures of his house. This was the first time I realized that my hobby might come across as slightly intimidating.

- It's only art, I said.

Then it was quiet for a while. I was a bit nervous. I could see him peering out in the dark, looking for clues.

- What art, he shouted flatly.
- l'art pour l'art, I answered.

A global view on architecture

I've always felt that Nome is one of those places on the edge of the world. It's just about to tip over. Some of the houses have tipped in their own ways, standing on stilts that have sunk down in the summer melt.

But new houses are also being built, and for some reason these facade-like boxes seemed to be in fashion.

 

I mentioned this to a guy from the lower 48. We were sitting in Polar Bar and there wasn't really much to talk about. There's a lot of strange houses here in Nome, I claimed. He'd probably done some traveling because he had this theory that houses got stranger the further north you came. What's more, you could see the same tendency south in the southern hemisphere – meaning that all houses, and architecture in general, got weirder towards the poles. I asked if it would mean that architecture was at its best at equator. I doubt it, he said.

Miniature thinking

The last decades we've seen several artists building meticulous models of houses and cities, as a twisted representation of reality. What is less talked about is the somewhat vague notion of the opposite.

The drunk woman in Nome

 

A drunk native came up and asked if I was taking pictures. She asked if I wanted to photograph her, but being drunk she had some problems standing still under the long exposures. I was getting frustrated because I knew the pictures would be good if she only could stop moving. Then it turned out she thought I was making a movie. We got that sorted out, but suddenly she lost interest and took off.