Photographs and text by
Andrea Gjestvang / Moment
In Norway, July 22, 2011, has forever etched itself into both collective and private memories. On that day, a car bomb killed eight people and damaged government buildings in Oslo; a few hours later, 69 young people were killed at a Workers’ Youth League (AUF) summer camp on the island of Utøya. (A political organization for youth, the AUF is associated with Norway’s Labor Party.) The confessed perpetrator is Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian right-wing extremist who claimed he wanted to rescue the country from the Muslim world by attacking the social democrats and Norwegian immigration policies.
This photographic series is an ongoing project to portray the youths who survived the massacre at the summer camp. While nearly 70 people were killed, about 500 survived, many of whom were badly wounded. More than half of the survivors are under the age of 18. They have returned to their daily lives now. They go to school, hang out with friends, and fall in love. They go to bed every night and look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. But their lives have changed. Perhaps what one of them sees in the mirror is a person with one arm instead of two. Maybe one of them doesn’t see clearly, because he lost an eye. Some have difficulty handling the easiest tasks, and some struggle to find meaning. At the same time, what strikes me is their incredible will and ability to move on and focus on the good things in life.
Pax, the Norwegian publisher, will launch this project as a book in October 2012
