Line Ørnes Søndergaard

How Do You See HIM?

How do you see him?
Would it change anything if you knew his name?
His age?
Archibald. 59. 

What if I told you 
that he run a boxing club where he helps underprivileged youth stay off the streets? Keeps them off the drugs. Out of fights. That he has saved many lives.

What if I told you 
he donates to charity each week even though he can hardly make a living?
That he visits his parents grave with flowers every month? 

What if I told you 
he's had five wives?
Eight children.
Fifteen grandkids. 

What if I told you 
he spent half his life in and out of jail?

What if I told you 
that one of those sentences was for battering his wife unconscious days after she gave birth to his twins? 

Now.
How do you see him?

In the context of reflecting around a female gaze, I keep getting lost in the fluidity of the gaze itself. How loaded our gaze can be. How impossible it is for it to be open. Without being shaped and colored. I wonder if my gaze when directed at him would have been different if I only knew some of these facts. 

Line Ørnes Søndergaard (b. 1986) is a project-based photographer working with social and political issues. Her intimate photographic approach has received attention in the photographic landscape and awarded at large. Her work has been widely published and exhibited and is a part of the permanent collection of Preus Museum, Norway. Current with the book "Bruddet" (Press, 2021) together with writer Yohan Shanmugaratnam.

line.sondergaard@gmail.com