“Not to brag, but I am from Gamvik” is a portrait of a fishing village on the Barents Sea coast that is struggling not to disappear from the map. Representing a network of small but tight-knit communities on the periphery that better understand the interdependence of man and nature, the residents seek to reimagine a society of the future in which people are more important than profit.
Book Description:
In 2020, I was invited to the fishing village of Gamvik on the Nordkinn peninsula in Norway’s Finnmark County to develop a portrait of the community for a local museum. I was to be the resident photographer for 200 residents of various nationalities, in a place that is desperately trying not to disappear from the map. Places like Gamvik are already treading on thin ice as the global market and climate change make their traditional social models inadequate faster than they assumed. Struggling with the exodus of the young, the locals have decided to make a U-turn toward a social economy in which the well-being of people and nature, high culture and ecologically sustainable fishing are to be their chance for survival. They represent a network of small but tight-knit communities on the periphery that, with a better understanding of the interdependence of humans and nature, are trying to reimagine the society of the future in which people are more important than profit. The concept and format follows in the tradition of local media, and the method of execution is an exercise in micro-history, defined by Charles Joyner as the act of asking globally important questions in small places.
This publication has never officially gone outside this community, except for occasional author meetings. It has never had an official presentation in Poland. In an effort to minimize its footprint we give it personally – as a gift. It is never sold, and we send it from the Arctic by mail only as an exception. The form of the local newspaper was a tool-request to open the conversation. The museum, wanting to ask questions about the future, needed to provoke a situation. The most important stage was to be the residents’ responses to the newspaper. Since the local identity is an amalgam (16 nationalities out of 220 residents), this led us to a trilingual publication that could at the same time have the practical function of a guide-and-dictionary for new residents. It contains practical elements: a schedule of convoys, weather characteristics or a pattern for knitting a sweater. It’s great for packing sandwiches, frying fish and firing up the stove. We are very proud that it has a real life object. In addition to its artistic nature, the results served as research to determine the museum’s new strategy. A selection of interviews was used by director Juni Dahr as a script for a performance in her traveling theatrical production.
About the author:
Michal Siarek is with a photographer who specializes in storytelling with a research bent. A hallmark of his practice is long-term projects that draw on micro-stories as a method of [asking] big questions in small places, combining monumental photographs with research material into a detailed story. His debut project titled “Alexander” focused on the mechanisms of power and representation in nation-states, using the example of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The project uses the myth of Alexander the Great and its impact on the politics of modern Macedonia to look at the construction of national myths. He is currently working in Northern Norway, on the Nordkinn Peninsula, on the coast of the Barents Sea where he was invited as photographer-in-residence and keeper of the Slettnes lighthouse. Siarek is a graduate of the Leon Schiller National Higher School of Film, Television and Theater in Lodz, Poland.
