marstershot archive • significant danish photography

Hunter and photo-poet

Jens Anton Thygesen 1946-1989 grew up in Gjern, Jutland. He had a great fondness for archeology, art and nature, and by the age of 17 he began practicing photography with ambition to become an animal photographer.

The passion for nature first brought him to Greenland in 1972. Here he later met Dorte and the love for her brought him permanently to Scoresbysund / Ittoqqortoormiit, one of the most isolated settlements in East Greenland.
In Scoresbysund he became a hunter, and came to live in the middle of and as part of the beautiful but also sometimes harsh nature. And by running a contracting business, he was also an important part of the small isolated community with about 500 residents.

As a hunter Jens Anton Thygesen knew and accepted the dangers that are the conditions of hunting, which in 1989 unfortunately cost him his life, presumably because he was attacked by a walrus.

His photographs are first-hand accounts of everyday family and hunter life, as experienced on the edge of the world – many of which have a storytelling cinematic poetry.
 

Interested in organizing an Jens Anton Thygesen exhibition