Laura Bisgaard Krogh | Andreas Haubjerg | Lumix Festival für jungen Bildjournalismus

Laura Bisgaard Krogh | Andreas Haubjerg
A Question of Honour

Sofia, 12, lies in her room. She has been at the Safe House for more than 18 months. She arrived with only her schoolbag as luggage. Sofia is the youngest girl at the house; everyone treats her like a little sister. At night, she is tormented by insurmountable traumas. This is why her room is directly next to the security room – so she will be heard at night.

Malak, 15, grew up in Syria and has been at the Safe House for more than two years. When the war broke out in 2015, her mother sent her to Denmark. Malak’s father and uncle monitored her telephone, punished her by confining her to the house and threatened to shave her head because she had been flirting with a boy from her class. When her uncle was angry, he beat her. Malak’s father and uncle are now going to be deported from Denmark.

Jamila, 14, has been at the Safe House for only a month. “I’m not allowed to go outside without an adult. I’m not allowed to use a mobile phone or social media, and I’m not allowed to have any contact with my family”, she says. For the first time in her life, she has not seen her mother or siblings for an entire month. It will stay this way for a whole year. That is a long time, but Jamila’s father is a danger to her. She has heard him speaking about a one-way ticket to her “homeland”, a place she has never seen.

Malak has left three kiss prints with red lipstick on the wall of her room. She loves make-up. Next to the lipsticks on her table, she has her temporary residence permit, which will expire in a few months. In the picture, she is wearing a headscarf. “My father wanted it that way”, she explains. “In the new photo, I just want to look good.” Malak is afraid that her permit will not be extended and that the authorities will deport her from Denmark with her father – the same man they are protecting her from here.

Amira and Malak embrace. In 14 days, Amira will leave the Safe House and move into her own apartment. She is both excited and afraid. After four years, this support facility has become her home. The Jutland Safe House is one of the five safe residences in Denmark where children and teenagers requiring protection due to family conflict can be accommodated.

Jamila takes a walk at dusk. She is especially happy when she can talk with the other girls at the house about their family background. “We all come from the same culture, so we have something in common”, she explains. The most important purpose of this Safe House is ensuring the safety of these girls. A secret location, an evacuation plan and the new names help. But it is just as important for them to have contact with other teenagers and the possibility to find their own identities.

The girls are not allowed to stay overnight in the others’ rooms during the week, but the weekend rules are different. Amira and Sofia are having a sleepover in Amira’s room – with a movie and lots of candy. Amira feels like Sofia’s big sister: “I wanted to look after her right away. This is no place for a ten-year-old girl.” The two girls stayed up late last night, talking about Sofia’s “messy” thoughts, which often keep her awake.

Malak is not angry at her Syrian culture or religion, but at her father and uncle. “My mother is a Muslim too, and she wants nothing but the best for me.” At one point, doubt arose in her, as did the thought that everything that had happened was her own fault, that she could have avoided the violence and control if she had just done what had been required of her. Today, all doubt has vanished from her mind.

On a deserted road in Jutland, Denmark, there is a rather ordinary building with an unknown address. The authorities call it the “Safe House”. A closer look reveals surveillance cameras and tinted panes in the kitchen windows. This place is home to young women who have been exposed to threats, violence and oppression on the part of their families. Officially, these are “conflicts that arise within close family relationships and result from the perception that the family honour has been violated”. The residents of the Safe House have escaped arranged marriages, forced confinement and, occasionally, re-education trips to “home countries” they do not know. In extreme cases, girls who act against the family’s codes of behaviour face the threat of honour killing. At the Safe House, caught between fear and love for their families, they attempt to find their own identities and learn to live normal adolescent lives. The series “A Question of Honour” was created in collaboration with photojournalist Andreas Haubjerg.

Escape
Family
Identity
Loneliness
Women

A Question of Honour – Intro

Photographers Laura Bisgaard Krogh und Andreas Haubjerg speak about their project A Question of Honor.

3 Questions

1. The door opener: Can you describe a formative moment in your career as visual journalists?

It has been an eye-opening experience to work together closely as photographers and as people. You constantly have another set of eyes to look at your story and that is a resource. You can support and help each other and reflect on the things you have seen and experienced together during the day. The collaboration on this story has broken down our traditional perception about how to be a press photographer or documentarist. Instead of seeing each other as competitors we see each other as an extension of the other person. We know that we are here with the same purpose.

2. The decisive moment: When did you first encounter your topic and why did you decide to cover it photographically?

Having spent the last year working on stories about at-risk children and teenagers, we were led to the story about honour-related violence against girls. The girls are living a protected life, on a secret address, that the world rarely hears about. Since we had experience with at-risk children, we were given access. We decided to tell the story, because it is a conflict where the girls oftentimes are stigmatised as victims. We wanted to explore how the girls find their own identity after a childhood filled with violence and negative social control.

3. The future: What could the visual journalism of the future be like?

Today we see a tendency towards more collaborations in journalism and photography. At the same time, the lines between genres in art and journalism are also becoming more blurred. We see this as two very positive phenomena because it means that we as storytellers have more tools and ways to tell a story. This does not mean the end of classic photojournalism. The new ways of working are not a replacement but more so an addition to the toolbox. We can now offer a wider perspective on the story. A great collaboration means that we are much stronger.

Curated by Anna Brauns und Anastasia Shvachko

*1994 in Denmark
Laura Bisgaard Krogh lives in Aarhus, where she is studying at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. In 2018, she and her team won the Danish Picture of the Year Award as well as the College Photographer of the Year Award for their short documentary film about the relationship between a young woman with spasticity and her assistant.

www.laurakrogh.com
@_laurakrogh

*Denmark
Andreas Haubjerg is a Danish photojournalists, based in Aarhus and Copenhagen, Denmark. He studies Photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Through in-depth visual storytelling, he and Laura Bisgaard Krogh make personal stories on issues regarding human rights and living conditions with a focus on youth and identity. Their collaborative work shows a personal and rare view into the lives of at-risk children. Together they have created a personal visual language that shows the identity and story of their subjects.

www.andreashaubjerg.com
@4ndreashaubjerg

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