Unsettled City is a dark photographic essay by the Danish photographer M.H. Frøslev. It is about love and despair in a place where life, at times, can be very uncertain.
The book is a personal depiction of a claustrophobic environment with the cityscape as framework, captured in the cities of Saint Petersburg and Moscow over the last ten years. Through ninety-five photographs in contrasted monochromes and dusty colours the book unfolds the night as a motif. Here we meet bulldogs, street fights and abandoned roads alongside loving glances, intimate moments and faded buildings, all quietly standing still, waiting for the night to die down and the light to rise again. Through disquieting atmospheres and raw sensitivity Unsettled City shows us how the people of the night alternately love and fear both the city and each other. With this book M.H. Frøslev portray feelings of alienation, inequality and pain on a par with love, intimacy and fascination.
“As a narrator, I am looking for a place I can relate to and that moves me. These photographs are based on my own life and relations. The book is my encounter with the metropolis, but it is also a rediscovery of myself, and an examination of the feelings and relations that are associated with being connected to another person, a time and a place. I photograph my longing, my presence, my love and my fears. I photograph because it helps me understand my feelings. For me Unsettled City is about people finding love in the dark streets of a metropolis, where the night will either save or destroy you.”– M.H. Frøslev
Born 1988 in Copenhagen, Denmark. M.H. Frøslev worked in 2008 as photographic assistant for Danish Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol in Copenhagen but moved initially in 2010 to Moscow and later to Saint Petersburg where he started the project Unsettled City. His infatuation with making pictures is what led M.H. Frøslev to explore the silent and haunting experience of walking after dark in the streets of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Here he developed his photographic sense and his intimate relationship with the Russian cities. M.H. Frøslev live and work in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
M.H. Frøslev : Unsettled City
Embossed hardback with linen spine
21,5 × 28,5cm
95 images
128 pages
