Iceland review - 2016, Qupperneq 10

8 ICELAND REVIEW
One mother told me that she’d
rather be called independent
than single,” says New York-based
photographer Annie Ling of the
title of her project, Independent
Mothers, which explores single
motherhood in Iceland. Annie
spent two months in the North
Iceland town of Ólafsfjörður in the
winter of 2014-2015 as an artist in
residence at Listhús Art Space.
The idea for the project came
about following a conversation with
a friend who grew up in Iceland and
was about to become a single moth-
er in New York. “She was telling me
about how different it was for single
parents in Iceland; that it was more
common to have support,” Annie
tells me, continuing: “When it’s the
norm, society supports you more,
and vice-versa. If it’s the exception,
like it is in the US and elsewhere,
there is more stigma towards single
mothers but also towards children
who grow up with parents who live
apart.”
Exhibitions of Annie’s series
opened in Akureyri, North Iceland,
on June 19 last year, the 100th
anniversary of Women’s Suffrage
in Iceland, and at the Icelandic
Photography Festival at the
National Museum of Iceland this
past winter. Images from the series
were first featured in The New
Yorker. Being so common, most
Icelanders don’t give much thought
to single mothers but as Annie
highlights, different attitudes exist
in other countries. “It was very
interesting for people outside of
Iceland to learn how normal it is
for kids to grow up in single par-
ent households in Iceland. At the
same time, it was interesting for
Icelanders to see how this mentality
PHOTOGRAPHY
In her project Independent Mothers, photographer Annie Ling captures moments of
intimacy in the everyday lives of single mothers in Iceland.
ALL THE SINGLE MOTHERS
BY ZOË ROBERT. PHOTOS BY ANNIE LING.
isn’t really shared in other coun-
tries,” Annie comments.
On a two-month residency with
the road out of town often closed
due to bad weather and heavy snow,
Annie had the luxury of time. This
allowed her to study and document
with intimacy the private lives of
several of the single mothers in
the north. “I had plenty of time
to get to know the locals. I was
welcomed by several of the moth-
ers I met and I spent a lot of time
with them, listening and observing,
before I even started to photo-
graph,” she describes. Annie also
later photographed several women
in Reykjavík and Akureyri.
While single motherhood may be
accepted in Icelandic society, Annie
acknowledges that it’s still not easy:
she observed some of the women
she worked with juggle busy profes-
sional lives with the commitments
of motherhood. “No one assumes
it’s easy. It takes a village to raise
a child. Iceland is considered the
most feminist country in the world,
but still not everything is equal
between men and women.” One
such area of inequality is salary,
Annie points out. “A considerable
gender wage gap, among the high-
est in Europe, leaves female-head-
ed households at a disadvantage,
with fewer resources, while most
children still spend the majority of
time with their mothers.” Despite
this, compared to other countries,
Iceland is very progressive, Annie
emphasizes. “Women don’t just get
support from the government, they
also get it from society in gen-
eral and family members in this
close community. This ultimately
encourages independence.” *
More photos from the series can be
viewed on annielingphoto.com.