The first time I was in Afghanistan, I went to the Helmand Province to photograph the Afghan Security Forces. One day I was at a checkpoint and turned around when I felt a strange notion of someone standing behind me; It was a police man staring at me. One foot on a rock, holding his machinegun and his eyes locked at me. I took about six frames of him. All the same. No movement. We never spoke. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the small, seemingly unimportant details of the key hanging from the barrel of his gun and his zipper being open. 

There’s a special feeling looking in to another person’s eyes, not knowing who they are. Them starring back at you. It becomes mystical - the interaction. Even years later, when it is through an image on a wall, looking at each other from different places, in different perspectives, there is an encounter. A special connection. 

I’ve always been fascinated with the story of the man and his surroundings. The isolated man. The working man. The fighting man. But it isn’t the stereotypes that interest me. Even though it is soldiers and cowboys, it’s the stereotypes turned upside down. It’s the skinny Afghan soldier receiving three weeks of training, before being sent to the frontline. It is the Brazilian cowboy who can only afford four bullets in his six-shooter or the boys and men working all night catching bush crickets in Uganda for pennies. They live in the vast landscapes, in the jungles, in the chaos. Many of them are forgotten or unknown by the outside world. 

Some, I spent seconds with, others longer. Like the Mexican mezcal producers. I slept at their homes for a couple of days. In a shed, on a concrete floor somewhere, or next to the fire keeping the mezcal cooking. We talked at night and during day-time they showed me around on their agave fields. We never spoke before meeting each other. I simply showed up one day and they welcomed me in to their lives for a few days, letting me take their picture. 

To me the most personal form of photography is the portrait. It is someone giving themselves to everyone else. Allowing their story, their face and eyes, their person to be forever. I rarely instruct the people in my portraits. I don’t ask them to stand or sit in a certain way. I just turn around and there they are. Looking at me. Like an anonymous sculpture only there for a short glimpse. 

These men continue to trigger my curiosity. I was there photographing them, I remember the moment, but that is all. Afterwards they become the person on the photograph more than the person I met. They remain unknown to me. 

I guess that is why I always preferred keeping the men of my photographs untitled. 

- Nikolaj Møller

MAN UNTITLED by NIKOLAJ MØLLER in collaboration with LAST RESORT GALLERY and IRONFLAG PUBLICATION Design Ironflag - Text Peter Amby / Nikolaj Møller - Photography Nikolaj Møller - Production Søren Hørdum - Print JOHNSEN Typography Univers LT - Paper 300 gr. Gloss - Published Ironflag Publication. First edition of 350 copies, 2021 All rights reserved © 2021. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

90 pages. 21cm x 29,7cm. 300gr. gloss paper. Spiral back.