You first picked up the camera when you were a kid, taking what you’ve described as ​“crooked” photos on your parents’ cameras, which were strictly off limits. Then you began photographing in a more serious way as a teenager. What was the instinct you had to take those photos?

Inuuteq: No instinct, just interest. Curiosity. Afterwards, when I got more technical, I was doing a lot more experiments during that time — with colours, with distances. I didn’t know what kind of lens I liked yet. I was shooting everyday stuff with my classmates. Most of the photos I took were in class, but I was skating a lot with friends and snowboarding as well. It’s more difficult to take digital photos in the winter. The battery dies [more quickly].

How did you then decide that you wanted to study photography?

IS: I realised the importance of photography for society. It plays a major role in news and everyday life. I felt we didn’t have a specific photographer who was going to take up the responsibility of that role [in Sisimiut]. I went to a technical high school, so all my friends wanted to become engineers or pilots. Around that time, I became aware that [in Greenland] we don’t know a lot about our own culture. I was already thinking back then that our language is very picture-based, so how can it translate when you become a photographer?

So you felt like photography was your way of communicating?

IS: Mostly it was a way of understanding myself.

In 2015, you decided to move to New York. How was that?

IS: To move to a city like that was very scary in the beginning. I was first in New Jersey, because when I arrived I had no place to stay. I was lucky enough to meet a person who loves Greenland and Greenlandic people. She let me stay with her until I found a place.

You found people in New York to be ​“brutally honest”. Does that differ a lot from Sisimiut?

IS: No, my hometown is like that, too. People are known to have an opinion. But New York is man-made, very artificial and very brutal, in a good way. I still loved New York, but I missed the sky – we have a lot of sky here in Greenland. We don’t have trees. I’m not good at waking up early, but I was waking up for sunrise just to feel connected to nature.

You’ve previously said that when you left Greenland, you realised how important your culture was to you.

IS: When I was around 17, I moved to San Diego, California. I went to a language school with a lot of young people from around the world. Of course they had questions about Greenland and Greenlandic culture. I’m from somewhere that is very different from most other places. But I realised I didn’t know a lot about my country or my culture, so I felt like we were losing that connection.