a costal hamlet

the question was asked over breakfast where i was heading to-day and i wasn’t sure. the process of determining can be overwhelming and even though i know that all experiences are new experiences, i still think that some can be better than others. i didn’t want to head into the city as i would be there to-morrow so even though i said that we didn’t have to stop passing through it yesterday, i headed for helsingør.

but i also was preoccupied. it was my night to make dinner and was told that a necessary ingredient - butternut squash - wasn’t available down the road at the super best. i debated on whether to find the squash first and go assured that i won’t have to panic with a potential modification or make the most of the light and worry later.

chose the former and it seemed a good choice. as non of the food shops in hellerup had any squash. headed to the central train station and the stands in vesterbro thinking it would be there or nothing.

having procured the fundamental ingredients for dinner, i dropped them off at the house and headed north.

chose helsingør because the city centre looked interesting there was alight rise, there was the sound right there, i could see sweden - i forgot my passport otherwise i would have set foot in the country - and there was that resident.

for some reason i was hit by the “but what did you see?’ from people if i simply went on my way of wandering areas of shopkeepers and workers. helsingør was perfect as i could choose it seeming perfectly detached from that great hulking tourist attraction - and quite frankly if i could have gone further without changing trains, i would have kept going i wanted to get to hornbæk.

again it took some effort to get started. got the formal eyes working by dealing with the construction by the ferry terminal placing the castle in the background. walked along the tracks a bit to the hamlet hotel but then found myself being drawn in to the castle grounds first with the ironies. finding scenic views where one could pretend that one was in the past but with something tourist in the foreground - the tour bus parking spots.
then it was the light - the window in the men’s room, indentations in the keep. but in the end i simply gave in and used the digital camera to make the tourist shots rationalising that family and friends would want to see them.

of course this opened a whole new can of worms. where was the demarkation between the tourist snap and the serious one. does the serious one have to be ironic or cynical? some loser student asked to have me as an advisor as i am versed in travel photography where i see it as simply curiosity and comparing - afterall i am following the same plan and heading to the same places that i would head any other place in the world -find a district walk around it. repeat. i was photographing chairs, things lost etc - only this time they had danish accents. would the snaps made of the mustard coloured houses serious or tourist?



i found that the serious would break up something tourist into something formal - completely going against those photographers that i like and rejecting the things themselves. i had found more and more here in denmark, i was allowing things themselves to be manifest with the obsessive documentation of køb mand type shops and cafés.

this makes my working method horribly more complicated than i would want it to be and at the same time shows a weakness that i didn’t have in the past. when living in brasil could care less about proving that i was there. britain was the same. for images that remind me that i lived in britain i have to look at carol’s slides. the making of the tourist snap is proof that one was there as it incorporates that thing that could only be there.

nevertheless, walking the grounds of was quite nice, a lot of digital files made but mostly it was reaffirmed that northern people don’t wait out the season but actually get out in it. there were people walking their dogs, joggers, i was asked to make a snap of other tourists in front of the castle.

i found that while there was a large marina here, i couldn’t do anything with the water. again i felt that i was in an inland town rather than a coastal city.


oddly enough moseying around the castle grounds, slowed me down, i didn’t panic about the time “wasted” nor looking at how much daylight i had left. headed to the area that i saw when we were heading to the summer house. finally it became second nature to enter the courtyards, down culs-de-sac where the regularity of the street façades became highly personal. here were the tables left out, the chairs outside the doors for those houses that didn’t allow smoking. the play lots.



i was getting better at photographing along the street. the problem here was where i had to stand to get what i wanted into the frame. the pavements are mostly too narrow making the ideal spot to stand is in the bikeway. i am used to dodging machines as they come in herds governed by traffic lights. bikes are more problematic as they are less prone to grouping, and are harder to see as they are smaller. the ideal spot was between in the parked cars where there was this island of safety.

got lost in the pedestrian district. i found this great, my grid patterned view of intersections had me turned around but i found this exciting as a relatively small area seemed more open to possibilities. i kept off the main drag choosing the one with less movement on them. wishing that i had stopped here yesterday when i could have photographed more freely - it seems that shops close on sunday without the consumers rioting.

wandered until dark, bought some pastries and felt so north american not sitting while i ate them but ate discretely while walking on the back streets with no one about.

blurred the area between tourist snap and serious snap when i came to a church now not worrying so much about it. snaps of the remnants of christmas in the square

over dinner my hosts, surprised that herbivores eat well, seemed at a loss when what they saw as the ultimate non tourist headed to such a touristy spot.