Alone beneath the northern lights

In 2018 and 2019, I travelled through the Scandinavian Arctic, eventually spending a winter alone in a wooden cabin in Finnmark, four hundred kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. I came in search of solitude, a chance to disconnect and a different sense of time.

When I arrived in January, the sun remained below the horizon. My days revolved around simple tasks: cutting wood, lighting the stove, melting ice, roaming the tundra and waiting, sometimes all night, for the northern lights to appear.

Away from familiar comforts and distractions, everyday actions took on a renewed importance. The silence left more room for sensations, thoughts and observation of the world around me. Day by day, I explored the changes solitude brings to our sense of self and, paradoxically, to our relationships with others.

This experience would become the starting point for All that follows: I began to question my own way of being in the world before continuing that exploration through encounters with others. What do we discover about ourselves when we live apart from others?

View photographs

Two candles light a window overlooking a snow-covered forest at dusk.

An aerial view of a snowy valley dotted with woodland, with the sun low on the horizon.

A bare tree stands before a snowy mountain whose summit disappears into the clouds.

A green aurora ripples above a solitary tree on a snow-covered plain.

Green and violet Northern Lights unfold above a wooden cabin surrounded by snow.

An aerial view of a greenish watercourse bordered by snow, its ice crossed by dark cracks.

A tiny figure crosses a vast snow-covered plain seen from the air.

Isolated buildings stand out in a snowy expanse dotted with trees, viewed directly from above.

A snow-covered forest seen from directly above, its branches forming a network of dark lines.

Trees fade behind a dense curtain of falling snow.

A snowy ridge draws a soft line beneath a pale-blue sky.

Small bare trees emerge between two almost-white snowy slopes.

A strip of snow cuts diagonally across dark ice dotted with white marks.

Inside a tent, a small lamp illuminates a man wrapped in a sleeping bag.

Moonlight illuminates tracks across a snowy expanse beneath a faint green aurora.

An immense green aurora lights the sky above a snow-covered mountain and forest.

A bare tree stands against green and violet auroras above a snow-covered mountain.

A low sun casts orange light across the contours of a snow-covered plateau.

A man looks into a mirror by candlelight beside a frost-covered window.

In blue light, an isolated cabin appears amid a snow-covered forest seen from the air.