Six Degrees of Copenhagen 06

Taking its point of departure in the idea that every person on Earth is connected in the sixth degree, this series of photos depicts human connections through the city of Copenhagen.

It is an intriguing thought, that every person on the planet is connected in the sixth degree. The idea first surfaced in 1929, when Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story called “Chains”. The then new ways of communicating and travelling meant that the world shrank, and all of a sudden having acquaintances in other parts of the world became more common. Karinthy wrote about how you could point to a complete stranger on the other side of the planet, and by having someone you knew introducing you to their acquaintances, it would be possible to reach the stranger through no more than six levels of connections, by virtue of chains of friends. The idea of chains of friends form the basis of my photography project ”Six Degrees of Copenhagen”.

I do not apply the idea of six degrees in any scientific way. Instead, it is a way of working that magically enables me to travel through the city and meet its inhabitants. The setup is that I portray random people, that I engage with in the streets. These chance meetings end up with me taking personal photos of the people I meet – after having invited myself into their homes. At the end of each session, my subjects then send me to another person in their network. I then go and portray this acquaintance, who then in turn gives me the name of yet another person for me to portray. Each of the persons portrayed in “Six Degrees of Copenhagen” is part of a chain of friends.