Capturing the fleeting innocence of Danish youth

“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