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Fryd Frydendahl’s Salad Days
Photography Fryd Frydendahl

Capturing the fleeting innocence of Danish youth

Pinpointing the apex of youth’s inexperience and enthusiasm with these intimate portraits from Copenhagen

“For me it's not so much the actual age that defines youth but the feeling, that special carefree feeling,” says Danish photographer/part-time New Yorker Fryd Frydendahl. She’s talking about her series “Salad Days”, a portrait of ‘inexperience, enthusiasm, innocence and indiscretion’. Initially created for a show at the v1 Gallery in Copenhagen, to Frydendahl – and borrowing from Shakespeare’s Cleopatra – ‘salad days’, she explains, are about being young and foolish.

Shooting in places close to her own childhood – at the sand dunes near her father’s house or in a friend’s backyard, the photographer, now 31-years-old, tells us, “I had a great ‘youth’. It was filled with play, riot, punk and figuring out who I wanted to strive to become. For me, it was also a time where all of sudden I was having to grow up really fast because of a loss in my family. Maybe that's why I am drawn to this subject matter and the idea that it is never too late to create that feeling again.”

To see more of Frydendahl’s work, click here