MAN UNTITLED
The first time I was in Afghanistan. I went to the Helmand Province to photograph the Afghan Security Forces. One day I was at a checkpoint and turned around when I felt a strange notion of someone standing behind me; It was a police man staring at me. One foot on a rock, holding his machine gun and his eyes locked at me. I took about six frames of him. All the same. No movement. We never spoke. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the small seemingly unimportant details of the key hanging from the barrel of his gun and his zipper being open.
I’ve always been fascinated with the story of the man and his surroundings. The isolated man. The working man. The fighting man. But it isn’t the stereotypes what interest me. Even though it is soldiers and cowboys, it’s the stereotypes turned upside down. It’s the skinny Afghan soldier receiving three weeks of training, before being sent to the frontline. It is the Brazilian cowboy who can only afford four bullets in his six-shooter or the boys and men working all night catching bush crickets in Uganda for pennies. They live in the vast landscapes, in the jungles, in the chaos. Many of them are forgotten or unknown by the outside world.
– Nikolaj Møller
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