Why on earth would a seasoned, decorated photographer take a job at a local, small-town newspaper in the northern reaches of Norway?
That’s what we asked Jonas Bendiksen after he announced on Magnum’s blog that he’d be working at the Bladet Vesterålen newspaper, with a circulation of only 8,000, in the town of Sortland. In his blog post, Bendiksen writes, “We’ve heard it repeated countless times over the last decade: Newspapers are dying. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I do know I don’t want to die without ever having worked for one of these fine purveyors of information.”
But it turns out his decision is not simply a bout of extinction tourism brought on by nostalgia – it’s a personal challenge.
“I’ve fantasized for a long time about doing something like this,” says Bendiksen. “In much of my work, I’m often drawn to global, epic-scale issues – things that affect millions of people. I found that I was inspired to spend some time scaling down, and trying to look over time at a really small area, where nothing too obvious or dramatic was going on and to just see daily life in a fairly quiet place, one day at a time.”
So far Bendiksen has photographed everything from a street in Sortland that finally got a new tarmac to town council meetings – from fisheries to immigrants and asylum seekers. Online you can view his images of moose hunting and winter sports.
“I think up some of the stories, and the editor comes up with others,” says Bendiksen. “I want to do everything, to get a sampling of daily life of various people here.”
Bendiksen’s barnstorming career includes being a member of the prestigious Magnum photo agency since 2008, working across the globe, winning plaudits and international solo shows for his long-term documentary projects, contributing regularly to big publications such as National Geographic and securing almost every major award a photographer could hope to rack up before his 35th birthday.
The Places We Live(2005-2008), a project on urban slums worldwide that became both a multimedia installation and a book, is typical of Bendiksen’s broad scope and the type of work he’s stepped away from. He thinks of his work at Bladet Vesterålen as in some way redressing his lack of past work in his native Norway. It’s a leap of faith – he’d never set foot in Vesterålen offices before his first day.
“I went and met the newspaper editor for the first time when I got off the airport bus,” he says.
With a son in Oslo who stays with him half the time, Bendiksen splits his time between the capital and Sortland.
“I run up and down, roughly every other week,” he says.
The change has been a sort of homecoming. After beginning the work he discovered that his great grandfather was born in Myre, the same village where he stays. It’s a big coincidence since the town only has a population of 2,000. His father also grew up just a two-hour drive from Sortland. He says the northern exposure has been illuminating.
“I have a lot of respect for people who work in daily journalism, and local news in particular. These are guys who go out every day and find new stories or angles in the same tiny village for 25 years. That’s not easy,” says Bendiksen. ”This is all very good experience for me to apply to all my photography. Sharpening my eyes a bit for finding images in the everyday. This I’ll definitely take with me.”
All images: Jonas Bendiksen
Extinction Tourism: Work at a Newspaper While You Still Can
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Extinction Tourism: Work at a Newspaper While You Still Can
