A City That Reveals Itself Slowly

Published on by Otto von Münchow9 Comments

A few days ago, I returned from a photographic excursion to Tirana. Together with a friend and colleague, I spent a week in the Albanian capital, wandering its streets with a camera in hand. I enjoyed the city. I enjoyed its people. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, I found it difficult to photograph.

At first glance, Tirana seems full of possibilities. It is a lively and energetic city, bustling with activity from early morning until late at night. Its café culture is unlike anything I have encountered elsewhere. Every street seems lined with cafés, terraces, and outdoor tables filled with people talking, smoking, drinking coffee, and watching life pass by.

And yet, despite all this life, I struggled to find my way into the city photographically.

What interests me most is the human aspect of life. I am drawn to people with a distinct presence, those who somehow separate themselves from the crowd and reveal something of their personality in the way they move, dress, or carry themselves. When I photograph a city, I am often searching for those small signs of individuality that allow a larger story to emerge.

In Tirana, however, I often felt as though people preferred not to stand out. This is not unique to Albania. I have encountered a similar reserve elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Whether it is a cultural trait, a historical legacy from the time of communism, or simply my own perception as an outsider, I cannot say. But there was often a sense that people wished to blend into the flow of everyday life rather than draw attention to themselves.

The people I met were certainly not unwilling to be photographed. Quite the opposite. Many were open, friendly, and curious. Yet openness alone does not automatically create photographs. A photograph also needs tension, character, contradiction, or some visual thread to hold on to. Without that focus, it becomes difficult to move beyond description.

Perhaps that is why the city challenged me. The obvious photographs were easy enough to make. The more difficult task was finding something beneath the surface. Photography, at least for me, is rarely about documenting what a place looks like. It is about trying to understand something of what it feels like.

Whether I succeeded remains to be seen.

So far, I have only glanced through the material. The photographs shown here are quick selections made shortly after returning home. Experience has taught me that the strongest images are not always the ones that first catch my attention. Sometimes a body of work needs time. Distance often reveals things that remain invisible in the immediate aftermath of a journey.

For now, I am left with the feeling that Tirana may be one of those cities that reveals itself slowly. Some places announce themselves immediately. Others require patience. Perhaps the real photographs are still waiting for me somewhere among the hundreds of frames I have yet to properly examine.

This Week’s Book Read

What could be more fitting after a week in Albania than a book devoted entirely to the country?

Inside Albania by Alice Taylor is perhaps not a groundbreaking photo book in the traditional sense. It does not seek to reinvent visual storytelling or challenge photographic conventions. Instead, its strength lies elsewhere: in its patient and affectionate portrayal of a country that remains unfamiliar to many outsiders.

A British photographer and writer, Taylor has lived in Albania since 2017. Over the years, she has travelled extensively throughout the country, documenting not only its landscapes and towns, but also its traditions, history, and people. The result is a richly illustrated journey that moves far beyond the usual tourist destinations.

The book takes readers from textile weavers in Lezhë to saffron harvesters in Berat, from remote mountain villages to stories rooted in folklore and history. Along the way, it reveals a country of remarkable diversity, where centuries-old traditions continue to coexist with a rapidly changing present.

What I appreciate most about Inside Albania is its desire to look beneath the surface. Rather than presenting Albania as a collection of picturesque locations, Taylor approaches it as a living and complex place shaped by culture, memory, and everyday life. The photographs are accompanied by stories that provide context and depth, helping the reader understand not only what they are seeing, but why it matters.

For anyone interested in Albania—or simply in discovering places that still lie somewhat outside the mainstream travel narrative—Inside Albania offers an engaging introduction. It is both a visual journey and an invitation to look a little closer at a country whose story is often overlooked.

Find Inside Albania on Amazon

For your information: If you decide to buy the book [through this Amazon link], I’ll receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it helps support the blog.

Another City, Another Rhythm

Published on by Otto von Münchow4 Comments

While you are reading this, I have already arrived in Tirana. For the coming week, I will be photographing the city—still something of a hidden gem of Europe, though increasingly discovered by travellers and photographers alike.

I will be working alongside my friend and colleague Boris from Germany. Most days we will photograph separately, each following our own instincts through the streets, but at times we will walk together, photographing side by side and later discussing the day’s work over dinner or a late drink. We have worked in a similar way before, three times in Naples and once in Bucharest. Now it is Tirana’s turn.

What I value about this kind of collaboration is precisely the balance between solitude and exchange. Street photography is, in many ways, an intensely personal act. We move through the same spaces, encounter the same light and the same streets, yet inevitably return with entirely different photographs. Those differences are always revealing—not only about the city, but about ourselves and the way we see.

For me, this trip also represents a dramatic shift in surroundings. Only last week, I was in the wilderness of Washington State. Together with three friends, I spent several days canoeing and backpacking around Baker Lake, preparing for this summer’s larger expedition, paddling the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson City—a journey of roughly 450 miles or 725 kilometres.

I have always been drawn to these abrupt shifts in place and subject, to photographing almost opposite conditions of life. One of the great privileges of working as a photojournalist is precisely this movement between worlds. One day may be spent in conversation with a homeless man, the next photographing a head of state. This time, the contrast is between continents, between silence and density, between wilderness and urban life.

Photography changes with those transitions. In nature, attention slows. The eye adjusts to space, weather, rhythm. In a city, everything becomes more immediate and unpredictable. One works faster, reacts faster, reads gestures and movements differently. Yet both environments demand the same thing in the end: presence. The willingness to remain attentive to whatever unfolds in front of the camera.

Next week, I will share more photographs and impressions from Tirana. For now, it feels good simply to arrive somewhere new and begin looking.

From Fragments to Form

Published on by Otto von Münchow6 Comments

Early last week, I received the proofread manuscript for my Cuba book—a project that has been a long time in the making. It was a particular kind of pleasure to sit down with the text again for what will hopefully be the final edit, correcting inconsistencies and small details the proofreader had pointed out.

For years, the project has existed in fragments: journeys across Cuba since 1991, conversations, photographs, notebooks filled with observations, and countless revisions of the text itself. At times, the book has felt less like a clearly defined project and more like something slowly accumulating over time, almost on its own terms.

Yesterday, I finally sent the completed manuscript back to the publisher. That moment carried a strange mixture of relief and hesitation. After living with a project for so long, it becomes difficult to imagine it leaving the private space in which it was created. Until now, the book has largely existed between myself, the photographs, and the text. From this point forward, it begins to take on a more independent life.

Now another phase begins: shaping the physical book together with the publishing house. Sequencing photographs, balancing text and images, finding the right rhythm across the pages, thinking about paper, typography, and eventually the cover itself. In many ways, this part resembles editing a photographic series. Individual images may be strong on their own, but the real challenge lies in creating a coherent flow—something that allows the reader to move through the work with a sense of continuity and discovery.

I have always believed that a photo book is more than a container for photographs. At its best, it becomes its own form of narrative, one that unfolds slowly and asks the reader to linger. The pacing matters. The silences between images matter. Even the smallest decisions begin to shape how the work is experienced.

Let me just underline that this is going to be a book, in which both text and images carry equal importance. My goal is that they will complement each other and give the reader different experiences.

For now—and for the first time—I can genuinely see the horizon of the finished book. That feels both satisfying and slightly unreal.

The Shape of the Process

Published on by Otto von Münchow6 Comments

I have always enjoyed editing video. There is something in the process—shaping, cutting, finding rhythm—that feels closely related to working with photographs. After the intensity of the workshop week in Turin under the guidance of Anders Petersen, the past ten days have been devoted to editing our latest video for the YouTube channel I run together with Sven Creutzmann.

Back in March, Sven and I met in Hamburg. Part of the purpose was to record this new session; part of it was to continue shaping a future collaboration we have already begun to outline. Now I am back in Seattle, working through the material.

This time, the process began more slowly than usual. I decided to change editing software. For years, I have worked in Sony Vegas Pro—a program I know well, almost instinctively. That familiarity has always given me a certain confidence in the editing process.

But gradually, and from several directions, the suggestion has returned: to move to DaVinci Resolve. Sven among them. Like Vegas, it is a non-linear editor, but beyond that, the differences are substantial. Starting over—even partially—inevitably slows things down.

The first days were hesitant. Not difficult, exactly, but unfamiliar. Every small action required attention. Where things once happened almost without thought, they now demanded intention.

And yet, after only a week and a half, the advantages have become clear. The trimming feels more fluid, more precise. The timeline responds differently—less friction, more immediacy. And working with multiple cameras is, quite simply, on another level. That alone changes the tempo of the entire process.

It is still early, but I already sense that this shift will matter. In fact, despite starting from near zero, I suspect I have finished this edit faster than I would have in my old, familiar environment.

So far, I have only used the free version of DaVinci Resolve. That will likely change.

The video itself revolves around a conversation between Sven and me—about working with film, and about the differences between analogue and digital photography. Neither of us is about to abandon digital for professional work, unless the situation specifically calls for it. But film introduces a different pace, a different awareness. Not necessarily because of its technical qualities, but because it changes the way we approach the act of photographing.

In that sense, the shift from one editing tool to another is not entirely different. It is not just about efficiency or features, but about attention. About slowing down just enough to see what one is doing again. And perhaps, in that brief return to uncertainty, finding a slightly different way forward.

This Week’s Book Read

The Decisive Moment ( Images à la Sauvette in French) by Henri Cartier-Bresson is often regarded as one of the most important photography books ever published. It brings together images from the first two decades of his career, a period in which much of his visual language took shape.

First published in 1952 by Éditions Verve, the book features a cover by Henri Matisse. That pairing already suggests something essential in Cartier-Bresson’s work: a tension between intuition and structure, between the immediacy of observation and a deeply internal sense of form.

The book was met with widespread acclaim and quickly took on an almost canonical status. Robert Capa famously referred to it as a “bible for photographers,” a description that still feels appropriate. It remains a foundational reference—not only for what it shows, but for how it frames the act of seeing.

What emerges across its pages is a way of working that moves effortlessly between the intimate and the observational. Cartier-Bresson’s photographs are often described as decisive, but they are equally attentive. They hold both clarity and ambiguity, precision and openness.

The original edition has long been out of print and has become a sought-after collector’s item. The version now available is a facsimile—reduced in size, but carefully produced and more accessible. It is accompanied by a thoughtful essay that traces the making of the book, its lasting influence, and the thinking behind its title.

Get Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment on Amazon

For your information: If you decide to buy the book [through this Amazon link], I’ll receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it helps support the blog.

Inside a Photo Workshop: Pushing the Process

Published on by Otto von Münchow7 Comments

Attending a photo workshop is always both invigorating and demanding. If I put in the work, I come out on the other side changed—my approach shifted, my thinking loosened, my energy renewed. This was certainly the case during a recent workshop with Anders Petersen.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent a week in Turin—or Torino—working under his guidance. It was my second time with him. And once again, something moved.

At this stage, I don’t expect to learn much about the craft itself. After so many years with a camera, the technical side rarely holds surprises, though there are always small things to pick up. What I look for instead is something less tangible, a shift in how I see. A reminder, perhaps, that seeing is never fixed.

A workshop creates a kind of temporary world. For a few days, everything revolves around photography. We walk, observe, photograph. We talk about images—constantly—during sessions, over meals, in passing. Even sleep offers no real escape, the mind keeps working, rearranging fragments of the day.

Anders has a particular ability to sustain this intensity. He pushes, but without imposing. His way of speaking about photography is direct and intuitive, sometimes unexpected, often warmly humorously— further emphasized by his idiosyncratic English—but always grounded in experience. There is no formula in what he says, only attention.

What sets him apart as a mentor is his sensitivity to the individual. He sees where each of us stands, and adjusts accordingly. Some are met with encouragement, others with resistance. Those of us who have been working for years are pushed harder, asked to reconsider habits that have long since settled into place. Still, he never leaves anyone without something to hold on to.

There is, inevitably, a dynamic within the group. Not competition in any overt sense, but a shared awareness. We watch each other, measure ourselves quietly, and in doing so, we move. It is a productive tension—one that sharpens rather than discourages.

For me, the days were long. Sleep was limited—four, perhaps five hours a night. Whenever there was time, I photographed. Even late in the evening, sitting with a beer among new acquaintances, I kept working. And in the early morning, before the day officially began, I edited and processed—trying to make sense of what I had captured the day before.

One simple rule guided me: always bring something to the critique. No matter how uncertain I felt about the images. Sometimes, they were not well received. But that, too, is part of the process. To work without the guarantee of success. To risk showing something unresolved. Growth rarely comes from what already works.

Looking at the work of others is equally important. It is a reminder that there is no single way of seeing. The same streets, the same moments—yet entirely different images. That difference is where things begin.

In recent years, I have been drawn toward complexity in my own work. Images with multiple layers, overlapping elements, a certain degree of visual noise. Photographs that resist immediate reading, that ask the viewer to stay a little longer. I still believe in that approach.

But during these days in Torino, Anders pushed me elsewhere. Toward simplicity. Toward reduction. He asked me to isolate, to remove, to cut away anything that did not belong to the core of the image. It felt, at first, like a step backward. But it wasn’t.

It was a reminder. That clarity is not the opposite of complexity, but another way of arriving at it.

This Week’s Book Read

Anders Petersen latest book Napoli (2024) is a book that resonates with me on a personal level. I have photographed the city myself on several occasions, first when I attended a workshop with him in Naples in 2022. It is a chaotic, demanding, and endlessly photogenic place.
For Anders, it was, by all accounts, love at first sight. He was struck by the city’s raw energy and accepted—almost instinctively—the challenge of photographing it. Naples does not offer itself easily, yet it does not hide. It reveals itself without filters, unafraid to show its wounds and vulnerabilities. It requires a particular kind of attention, one that moves beyond the surface, that recognizes beauty in the ordinary, and does not turn away from imperfection.

In Napoli, Petersen presents around sixty black-and-white photographs, varied in scale and rhythm. Through his lens, the city appears stripped of the colour so often associated with it. Instead, it is rendered in stark contrasts—deep shadows against harsh highlights. A visual language built on tension.

This tension feels inseparable from his way of seeing. The images hold a kind of duality: intimacy and distance, fragility and resilience. It is tempting to read this as a reflection of the city itself, but it is equally a reflection of Petersen’s photographic world. Without this contrast—without the friction between light and darkness—it is difficult to imagine his work carrying the same quiet, human tenderness.

Get Anders Petersen’s Napoli on Amazon

For your information: If you decide to buy the book [through this Amazon link], I’ll receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it helps support the blog.

Still Learning

Published on by Otto von Münchow10 Comments

Last week I found myself back in Italy, attending a photography workshop with the renowned Swedish photographer Anders Petersen. At nearly 82, Anders remains remarkably active—and just as inspiring as a teacher.

This was my second time attending one of his workshops, and I felt I gained even more from the experience this time around. The first was also in Italy, in Naples in 2021.

I’ll share more about the workshop in my next post. For now, I’ll leave you with a handful of photographs taken during those days.

The Art of Continuing

Published on by Otto von Münchow11 Comments

After last week’s exciting days in Hamburg, this week felt like a bit of a comedown.

I received two rejections. First, one of my photo projects wasn’t selected for a show here in Bergen. Not long after, I got word that another project—submitted for a national portfolio award—didn’t make it either. Both are major opportunities, so I didn’t expect anything going in. Still, it’s almost impossible not to feel disappointed when your work is turned down.

There was, however, something positive to take from it. I called the curator at the gallery in Bergen, and she told me my project had been among the runners-up. A small consolation, perhaps—but a meaningful one. Even better, we arranged to meet for coffee next week. I’m very much looking forward to that conversation.

My mornings are reserved for focused work at my desk

Aside from these setbacks—if that’s what they are—it has actually been a productive week. I’ve edited and processed a larger story for a magazine and written my regular column for a Norwegian online photography publication.

Fittingly, the column was about the art of continuing—the idea of creative work as a kind of ongoing loop. My argument was simple: if you can embrace repetition, establish a consistent practice, and allow yourself to be imperfect, you create the conditions needed to keep going.

The most productive photographers understand this. They build routines that protect them from both the traps of success and the weight of failure. They show up and do the work—regardless of whether yesterday’s efforts were praised or ignored.

For me, routine is key.

My own is simple. I start the day with coffee, email, and breakfast while reading the today’s newspapers. Then I go for a short walk—no matter the weather—just to clear my head. After that, I make a list of the day’s tasks before sitting down to write or to edit and process images. Being my own employer, this structure is essential. Without it, it’s far too easy to postpone things—until later, or tomorrow.

The afternoons are for shooting or being out in the field. © Sven Creutzmann

To protect this routine, I try to schedule meetings, shoots, and interviews in the afternoon. The mornings are reserved for focused work. That’s the intention, at least. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way.

The specifics of the routine aren’t what matter most. What matters is that it exists. Build your own. Stick to it as often as you can. Break it occasionally for fun or for any other necessary reason. Adjust it when needed.

And then—keep going.

Something Taking Shape

Published on by Otto von Münchow17 Comments

I’ve spent the past week and a half in Hamburg, working closely with my friend and colleague Sven Creutzmann, putting together a new business plan for what will become our next joint venture.

We’ve been collaborating for decades—teaching workshops, travelling, and photographing together across Latin America, in countries like Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. But this is different. We’re not just continuing what we’ve done before; we’re building something new. Something bigger. It’s a whole different animal.

It’s still too early to share any concrete details, but over these past days we’ve thrown a lot of ideas into the air—testing, challenging, refining. And between the two of us, I genuinely feel that what we’re shaping could become something quite special over the next few years. For now, we’ve laid the foundation. Next comes the real work, building it, piece by piece.

What I can say is that our ambition is to create a platform for learning and experience—one rooted in meaningful authorship and a sustainable creative ecosystem. We want to prioritise depth over speed, clarity over noise, and intention over trend. The framework we’re developing places strong emphasis on long-term projects and on a kind of ongoing dialogue between our different artistic perspectives—a dialectic, if you will—that we hope will give the platform its own distinct voice.

As things begin to take shape, I’ll share more and bring you into the details of what we’re working on.

Today, Sunday, I’m heading back to Bergen. Before leaving, Sven and I also recorded material for our next YouTube video for our channel Soulful Frames, which will focus on photographing with analogue film. As part of that, we visited a shop here in Hamburg dedicated entirely to analogue photography—Khrome. They offer both new and second-hand camera equipment, a wide selection of film, and in-house developing and printing. There’s even a small gallery space with changing exhibitions.

It was, in many ways, the perfect place to end this stretch of work—quietly inspiring, and a reminder of why we do all of this in the first place.

A Good Kind of Busy

Published on by Otto von Münchow9 Comments

It’s been two weeks since my last post. Around last weekend things suddenly became busy, and I had to skip writing. They’ve been good weeks, though—just full.

One of the things I’ve been working on is an assignment. It’s a portrait and longer reportage about a man who has been through quite a journey in life. For thirty years he struggled with drug addiction, but managed to pull himself out of it. He has now been drug-free for almost ten years. Recently he has even started building his own business, which already seems to be doing quite well. It’s quite a story—from addiction to entrepreneurship. I’ll keep working on it in the coming weeks.

On a more personal note, the most satisfying moment these past two weeks came on Thursday, when I received feedback from the editor at the publishing house that will publish my Cuba book. The response was almost overwhelmingly positive. Of course, there are still suggestions for improvements and a few things that need to be adjusted—that’s part of the process. I’ve already started working through the edits and hope to finish by the end of March, or perhaps a week into April.

I’ve also finally gotten around to scanning and processing film from my last trips to Cuba, in 2023 and 2025. The photographs belong to a project I call My Cuban Diary, which I’ve been working on since 2001. For this project I use film and one camera dedicated solely to it—and I expose only one frame a day. That single image has to say something, in one way or another, about the day I have lived through. Looking back, I realised I wrote about the project here on the blog already in 2011: Cuban Diary. Two of the most recent images are shown here.

Finally, over the past couple of weeks I also submitted a photograph to what is perhaps the most important annual gathering of artists in Norway. Selected works are exhibited in Oslo, and to be accepted for Høstutstillingen—The Autumn Exhibition—is considered quite an honour.

I certainly don’t expect anything. But if I don’t try, I won’t stand a chance.

So yes, it’s been busy—but the good kind of busy. The kind where things slowly move forward: a story taking shape, a book inching toward completion, old negatives revealing new memories, and a photograph quietly making its way toward a jury in Oslo. None of it guarantees anything, of course. But then again, photography has never been about guarantees. It’s about continuing to look, continuing to work, and occasionally being rewarded for the effort.

This Week’s Book Read

25 de Noviembre is the fourth—and so far the latest—book about Cuba by Italian photographer Ernesto Bazan. It is hauntingly beautiful.

What strikes me most is how much the work departs from Bazan’s earlier style. Perhaps that is one of the most important things an artist can do: move forward, explore new directions, and allow one’s work to transform.

While Bazan’s photography has always carried a poetic quality, this series feels closer to poetry itself. The book unfolds like a collection of visual poems—woven into a tapestry of darkness and light, sadness and hope, accumulated memories and fleeting moments of freedom.

In this sense, 25 de Noviembre also reveals a more intimate side of Bazan’s life. According to the photographer, the project became possible thanks to a dream his beloved companion had in 2015, in which she saw him returning to Cuba after ten years away from the island.

For someone like me, who has been returning to Cuba with a camera for many years, the book resonates in a special way. It reminds me how a place can continue to reveal new layers over time—and how photography, at its best, becomes a way of holding on to those moments as they pass.

Find 25 de Noviembre on Amazon

For your information: If you decide to buy the book [through this Amazon link], I’ll receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it helps support the blog.

In the Space Between

Published on by Otto von Münchow6 Comments

It’s been fun to be Norwegian these past couple of weeks. The 2026 Winter Olympics wrapped up today, and guess which nation came out on top? Yes—little Norway. We won the most gold medals and the most medals overall. In fact, it was our most successful Winter Olympics ever. And what makes it all the more satisfying is that we are a country of fewer than six million people.

Enough patriotic splatter—it’s already history.

However, while I’ve enjoyed watching fellow Norwegians excel in Italy, my friend and colleague Morten Golimo and I have been busy with something far less athletic, but no less competitive in its own way: refining our shared exhibition, which we hope to show somewhere here in Norway.

The working title has been Individuals. We’ve gone full circle through a number of alternatives, but it seems we’re returning to where we started. Sometimes the first instinct is the right one.

We’ve now arrived at a final selection of images. Much of our recent work together has focused on the titles of each paired set. We’ve searched for wordplay that is both precise and open—titles that invite interpretation rather than dictate it. Two of the pairs are shown here, though unfortunately the Norwegian titles don’t translate particularly well into English.

I wrote about this collaboration in the post A Step in the Right Direction. As I mentioned there, we have paired our photographs across very different approaches, methods, and subject matter. My work is rooted in street photography, Morten’s emerges from close observations in nature. Despite these differences, both bodies of work circle the same question: what does it mean to be an individual?

The pairs are not meant to explain each other, but to enter into dialogue. When these two visual worlds are placed side by side, something third emerges. A human gaze meets nature’s gaze. An urban space encounters a natural habitat. It is in this space between the images that the exhibition finds its voice. Here, categories begin to loosen. The boundaries between human and nature, between type and individual, grow less distinct.

In Also sprach Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche writes about human types—not as rigid classifications, but as stages, forces, and ways of being in the world. Our exhibition draws loosely on this idea: that humans, animals, and even plants can be seen as carriers of will, character, and individuality—not as representatives of something general, but as singular beings.

With this exhibition, we invite viewers to read the images together—to let them mirror and challenge one another—and perhaps to reconsider what truly separates us from what we so easily call nature.

This Week’s Book Read

Only Barely Still – On Women and Wilderness by Catherine Lemblé is one of those photobooks that lingers with me after I’ve put it down. It quietly challenges the traditionally masculine narrative of Arctic exploration—without ever raising its voice.

Rather than repeating the familiar story of conquest and heroic endurance, Lemblé turns her attention to the lives of women in Svalbard. Through intimate portraits, landscapes, and archival photographs, she constructs a counter-narrative rooted in coexistence rather than domination.

Svalbard is often imagined as a harsh, mythic outpost where only the toughest men survive. In the visual history shaped by early exploration, women are largely absent. At the same time, the polar landscape itself has been described in feminised terms—“virgin,” “barren”—as something to be conquered or protected. Lemblé’s work unsettles these inherited metaphors.

What I appreciate most is the book’s restraint. It does not replace one heroic myth with another. Instead, it centres female presence as steady and matter-of-fact. The endurance depicted here is not spectacle, but lived experience. The inclusion of historical photographs of women in Svalbard quietly reclaims a forgotten visual archive.

An essay by Abi Andrews, drawing on ecofeminist thought and Ursula K. Le Guin, deepens the reflection by asking what heroism might look like if defined by presence rather than conquest. That idea stayed with me.

This book is not only about Svalbard. It is about how we tell stories—about landscapes, about gender, about belonging. And it gently invites us to reconsider those stories.

Find Only Barely Still – On Women and Wilderness here.