Peter Freuchen’s Private Servant on the 5 Thule. Exp.

The dummy book focuses on the role of photography and the archive in the colonial relationship between Greenland and Denmark from a conceptual perspective.

The book comprises two series of photographs from the private archive of the Danish explorer Peter Freuchen. One of the series comprises reverse sides of photographs, while the other presents the front side of the same landscape photos. The photographed reverse sides, with their notes and catalogue references, reveal colonial structures. Places, names of items and identities of the subjects of the photographs are not mentioned unless the people in question are Danish. In other words, the Inuit people and the Greenlandic items have been anonymised.

In the book, the fold-out pages with landscape images are printed on the reverse side – or perhaps more accurately, the inside, as these pages are bound such that they can be folded out to form a circle that provides a 360-degree horizon. The paper is thin, which means that the photos of landscapes and the photos of the reverse sides intermingle.

The book is part of a major project that focuses on Danish archive collections, put together by Danes who have had various relationships with Greenland. The project centres on the nuances of the “common” narratives, and attempts in this way to challenge the historical basis that maintains Denmark’s colonial relationship with Greenland.