© Joakim Eskildsen
[ work in progress since 2005 ]
Danish photographer Joakim Eskildsen started photographing when he was 14 years old – now he's 47. During the first years, he photographed around the house, the fields, and the forest. From the first beginning, it was a certain light or weather condition that inspired him and made him eager to go out. Since that time, Eskildsen has moved away from the village, and started to photograph on different journeys. Eskildsen has traveled through Europe, Africa, India, North and South America for his photographic projects, usually spending extended periods of time in a place to document the life of the Roma, Cuba, or poverty in the US.
At some point, his interest started turning back to the beginning, and to the things that had so much inspired him at first. Eskildsen felt it was a relief to photograph in the immediate surroundings, rediscovering what had made him so interested in photography – an artistic homecoming as it were. It coincided with the time his son was born, and little later, his daughter. Since he became a father, spending more time at home, his focus shifted more and more to his immediate surroundings. As soon as his children learnt to walk they would appear in the images by accident. “I was trying to photograph the landscapes, just as when I first began photographing at the age of fourteen. So first, I tried to get the children out of the image frame,” Eskildsen says. “But I realized they added something interesting to the work, and changed the way I looked at my surroundings.” Soon, the children became an essential part of Home Works, an ongoing project that is now in its 15th year, the age of Eskildsen’s first child, and the seventh home.
The series is divided into seven parts accordingly, starting from Finland, Denmark, and Germany, and the last one being an old farm house South of Berlin.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
HOME # I (FINLAND 2005-2007)
HOME # II (DENMARK 2007-08)
HOME # III (DENMARK 2008-09)
HOME # IV (DENMARK 2009-2010)
HOME # V (GERMANY 2010-12)
HOME # VI (GERMANY 2012-2017)
HOME # VII (GERMANY 2017-)
