There are small ones boats scattered in the still water.
Flakes of ice drift slowly by, and in the background the mountains rise in a pale light that is neither quite night nor day. It is a picture of calm – but also of life. Of something lived, not staged.
In Inuuteq Storch’s image, the homeland is not something to be beautified. It is something to be felt.
At the Vejle Art Museum, his photographs are now included in the new collection exhibition “Homeland”, where they hang side by side with Danish Golden Age paintings.
The so-called Golden Age covers the first half of the 19th century and is a central period in Danish art history, when artists such as CW Eckersberg and Christen Købke created idealized images of the landscape and the nation – in a time characterized by crises, war and loss. An art historical conversation across time – and across perspectives.
Because where the artists of the Golden Age painted Denmark as an idealized homeland, Storch shows a Greenland that is both beautiful, raw and recognizably human.
– The artists of the Golden Age period constructed a story about Denmark, where they pushed the buttons to make the landscape appear as unambiguously wonderful as possible, explains art historian Line Brædder from the Vejle Art Museum.
His pictures bring in a voice that we have dealt with too little in Danish art history – a look at Greenland from the inside
At Storch, the grip is different. She continues:
– He breaks with the beautifying way of portraying his homeland. There is a great love for the place, but also an honesty. Everyday life, youth life, cigarettes and taps are given space side by side with the beautiful landscapes.
This does not make the home country any less attractive – quite the opposite.
A look from the inside
Storch’s photographs draw on a longer photographic tradition in Greenland, where John Møller in particular documented the country through the camera from the end of the 19th century onwards. Today, Møller’s pictures are an important part of the visual history of Greenland – but they are also created with a view from the outside, marked by the fascination of the visitor.
At Inuuteq Storch, the perspective shifts.
– The decisive thing is that he sees Kalallit Nunaat from the inside, says Line Brædder.
It is not just a geographical difference, but an artistic one. Where the early photographs often register and maintain, Storch works to a greater extent with a form of lived presence. His pictures are not experienced as something viewed from a distance, but as something you step into.
You can feel it in the motifs. Friends hanging out. Gazes that meet the camera without posing. A landscape that is not just a background, but part of everyday life. Not as an icon, but as space.
– You get the feeling of a whole person who carries his camera around in his own life and lets us into it, she says.
Precisely this approach places Storch in the tension between documentation and experience. The images register reality, but they do so through a personal and sensual presence, where relationships, moods and situations are allowed to be left open.
It gives the photographs a special resonance. They are rooted in a concrete place – Kalaallit Nunaat – but at the same time speak to something universal.
– We find that guests from very different backgrounds are touched. They recognize the feeling of belonging, says Line Brædder.
She mentions a tour where a woman from the Middle East spontaneously found a photo from her phone.
– She said Storch’s pictures reminded her of her own life in the Middle East, and showed a picture of her children bathing from the rocks.
At that moment, the distance is canceled. Greenland will not be a distant motif, but an experience that can be reflected in other lives. It is perhaps precisely here that Storch’s pictures differ most significantly from the older tradition: They do not just show a place – they activate a feeling of belonging.
More than the idyll
In the exhibition, Storch’s photographs hang side by side with the landscapes of the Golden Age. Beech forests, fields and coasts – images that, over generations, have helped to shape the idea of the Danish and what it means to belong to a place.
But the meeting between the two expressions also opens up a realization.
– The images of the Golden Age period show a constructed and limited section of what a homeland is. We need more voices and more perspectives, says Line Brædder.
At Storch, the gaze shifts. Not away from the landscape – but into it.
His works expand rather than criticize. They show that belonging is not only linked to nature and national symbols, but equally to people, relationships and everyday situations. That what we associate with “home” contains both the beautiful and the worn, the quiet and the restless.
And perhaps most importantly: that it is experienced differently – depending on who you are and where you stand.
– His pictures bring in a voice that we have dealt with too little in Danish art history – a look at Greenland from the inside, she says.
It is precisely in this displacement that the exhibition finds its strength: when more views are given space, the story of where we belong also becomes larger.
A common question
Ultimately, the exhibition revolves around a single question: Where do you belong?
In the Golden Age, the answer was often clear and unified. Belonging was linked to the nation, the landscape and a common narrative about the Danish. The images pointed in one direction.
At Inuuteq Storch, the answer is less clear-cut – and perhaps precisely because of that, more recognisable. Here, belonging is not something fixed, but something that is lived and experienced. Something that can be linked to several places at once and that cannot be reduced to one narrative.
It is not a rejection of the previous images, but an expansion.
Perhaps this is exactly why Storch’s photographs stay with the viewer.
Not as an answer – but as a feeling.
