I nearly died before it all started. I was four years old when I climbed up a ladder to fetch a shuttlecock stuck in our apple tree one summer. The ladder tipped over. I jumped off and the ladder hit me perfectly in the back of my head with an appropriate loud thud. Lots of blood. Emergency ward and stitches. Still have the scar to show for it. A year later a friend in the kindergarten playground decided to hit me on my temple with a shovel. More blood. Somehow I survived it all. In the beginning I aspired to become an architect. I was good at drawing, but my bricklaying skills were not excellent. Started dreaming of working in an exotic country instead. Had a cup of tea with former Danish Finance Minister, Henning Dyremose, and was hired as a trainee in an exotic world class timber trading company. Moved to North Carolina and regularly drove to Georgia to work at the Port of Savannah with an African American guy named Tyrone. He was cool. Got arrested by a U.S. State Trooper for speeding in my boss’ car. Paid my fine and did my laundry at Suds & Duds on Walker Avenue. Not very exotic, actually. Returned to Denmark. Lived in a cold basement with no hot water. Survived mainly on oats with milk. One night I got drunk on a stolen bottle of Gammel Dansk. Not very exotic either. Packed my things and relocated to Hong Kong and stopped in India on the way out. Holy cows and charcoal tablets helped stop the acute diarrhea. Settled down in Coral Court on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. Now that was exotic. Night clubs, karaoke bars and lots of business trips to China with taxi drivers falling asleep behind the wheel. Snakes, scorpions, worms and cockroaches on the menu. Very exotic. I used to be very picky with my food. Now I made mama proud. Took a trip to Cameroon where I boarded a discarded airplane from the country once known as Yugoslavia. The shabby plane landed safely - thankfully - in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The passport control officer at Bangui airport held my passport upside down and asked me for a packet of cigarettes. I smiled politely. Just as I smiled politely one hour later at a dark checkpoint with no street lights when my car was stopped by three African men holding AK-47s. They sort of looked like military and asked me something in French. Chose not argue with them. Survived this experience too. Made it into the Central African jungle where I saw huge Aniégré trees and met the pygmies. It doesn’t get much more exotic than that. Continued on to Gabon to inspect some Okoumé logs. Then I flew to Laos for an exotic vacation. Laos is a one-party communist state and I had no visa and no more blank pages left in my passport when I arrived at the airport in Vientiane. The Laotian passport control officer held my password the right way around. He looked at me. Silence. No smiles. Then he found a stapler in a drawer, stapled ten extra Laotian passport pages into my Danish passport and stamped one of them with a visa entry stamp. No bullshit in Laos - only good service. Enjoyed my exotic vacation in Laos and zipped Coca Cola from a plastic bag with a plastic straw. Returned to Hong Kong and bought my first SLR camera in Stanley Street. Moved to Australia and started my own clothing business. Opened five clothing stores and chased a serial wanker out of the fitting rooms on more than one occasion. There are some weird people out there. Sold a lot of clothes. Bought a Hasselblad Xpan II and took a lot of photos. Had two beautiful girls. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt while I tried hard not to. Closed down the business a few years after Lehman Brothers pulled the plug. Fell ill with two nasty viruses and pneumonia all at the same time. Recovered. Jumped over a Tiger snake in Tasmania and survived a spider bite in Sydney. Worked for the Samwer brothers for a year. Then I decided it was time for something less exotic again. Joined IKEA. Worked with a bunch of great people, assembled a lot of furniture and had a lot of köttbullar. Moved back to Denmark and cheeky dog “Bales-boy” came into my life. Sold all my Canon gear to finance a medium format Fuji camera and some glass to go with it. So now I’m a Fuji guy photographing architecture.

And here we are…