No other town in Finnmark is more suited for a photoworkshop than Vardø. Although Vardø is both the oldest town in Finnmark and the easternmost town both of Norway and Europe, the number of inhabitants dropped by fifty percent during the last forty years.
Many houses are abandoned and deserted, the paint is coming off in flakes and some houses are only painted on the front side so that the town doesn’t look too run-down. Nevertheless, you can feel a serene and morbid vibrancy of the town while walking through it’s streets.
Not a single body was walking through all those doors for a very long time.
And all those things that nobody wanted to have any longer is piled up in the backyards.
Vardø is the oldest fishing town in Finnmark. And since it was the decline of the fishing industry during the last decades that forced people to move away, the most run-down houses can be found in the harbor area.
Abandoned ships ….
… and stranded monsters of the sea are witnesses of better times long ago.
But despite the mournfulness in the deserted corners, the town is also alive and kicking. Graffitis are everywhere, even in the most remote corners. We were strolling through the streets like curios kids during the five-day workshop in order to find even the most hidden of these artworks.
