As a teenager, she moved to Denmark with her father but continued to shoot Maputo during her travels back to Mozambique, where her mother and youngest sister remained. Having gone on an exchange programme from Denmark to Canada to delve deep into the photographic process, she realized that photography was what she wanted to pursue the rest of her life. The camera helped her to always be herself, and thanks to it, Ditte gained access to places she could have otherwise never appeared in.
After twenty years photographing life in Mozambique – its people, the city, the civil war, friends, struggles, addiction, love, togetherness, a sense of belonging and, generally, the everyday life as it was –, Ditte created a photographic archive depicting the history of the country, the relationships between people, how they loved, how they suffered, how they stood together, and how they kept on fighting for a better future. It could just be an image of a kid jumping on a yellow mattress, her mother looking out the window, her gay friend smoking a cigarette, or a black man standing in a Superman costume on top of a building; those pictures have a beguiling attraction in themselves. The moment you look at them, they fill you up with curiosity, wanting to see more and more of what she’s got.
Belonging is maybe one of the most important elements she’s been after throughout her career, whether it’s to a family, a community, a society or culture. “Love is belonging and belonging is loving”, she tells me. Ditte’s vision is all about humans, their life and the miracle of existence. She captures what it means to be human and brings to the front core values of what makes us one through her photographs. “With my camera, I insist on intimacy in pain. When death is all around, life burns bright and strong”, says Ditte. And I think this is one of the most beautiful explanations of one’s own photography.