A MILLION DOLLAR VIEW - Sofie Flinth
Sofie Flinth (b. 1996, Denmark) is a visual artist based in Copenhagen, working primarily with portrait and staged photography. Her photographs touch upon themes such as nostalgia, vanity, and manipulated imagery. By combining storytelling with everyday life she creates semi-docu scenarios with herself and females close to her. From merging a natural environment with artificial light, she stages her surroundings, exploring the imaginary and to what extent images portray reality.
In September 2019, in the small town Zandvoort on the west coast of the Netherlands, Flinth met a woman called Henny, walking her dog on the stormy beach. What started as a random meeting became a friendship and an exploration of identity through photography. In her series “A Million Dollar View”, Flinth follows the life of Henny during her love affair, capturing her new present. Henny will be turning 73 and lives on the 6th floor of a concrete apartment building. She lives alone with her dog Bella – her husband passed away five years ago. Together, she and her husband had moved there because of the apartment's "million dollar ocean view". They spent their summers here, winters in The Gambia.
“They wanted to feel free, she told me one afternoon while smoking a cigarette in her kitchen. Henny's late husband had worked as a portrait photographer and she as a fashion stylist. From introducing me to this part of her life, Henny and I started working together, trying to capture a piece of her fabulous past. We slowly, but steadily started to create a space that allowed us to explore her as a character by styling her in her own old clothes and embracing her self-image. With Henny in the role of the stylist and me as the photographer, a dynamic reminding her of her late husband, Peter – the meetings became playful explorations of their shared past. Suddenly the rampant COVID-19 entered our world and we were forced to put the collaboration on hold.”
During this lockdown Henny has fallen in love with a much younger man who she met during her travels in Africa back in January 2020. They have long phone calls everyday and she tells me that they are soul mates. Now they are hoping to share their future together and Henny is starting to fantasize about marriage. In November (2021) Henny and Flinth were finally reunited and Henny was photographed wearing her "secret wedding dress". No one can know that she bought it. It will simply "seem too crazy". She has been married twice before, this would be the first time wearing white, if it happens.