Nørrebro, "A dangerous place"

Nørrebro is a dangerous part of Copenhagen, where different ethnic cultures collide, gangs and violence rule the streets and you can never feel safe walking there. People get shot, stabbed and robbed on a daily basis and the tour guides recommend that you don't stroll around on Nørrebro by yourself...
 ...According to the media, that is!

I've lived in most parts of Copenhagen and Nørrebro has been the one part, I have loved the most! Stuff do happen here, but just the same as anywhere else in the world.

I remember my mom called me one day and said to me 'Kenneth, you have to be safe, don't walk around alone, etc.', I was like, what the hell are you talking about, mom?? 'and she replied 'They say in the news that Nørrebro is a dangerous place to be'.

In my 8-9 years in Copenhagen I've never seen any of the stuff that the media so often describes, besides the riot in 2007. I guess, as anywhere else, the media in Denmark thrives on fear and making everything 10 times worse than it is. Nørrebro is a big multi-cultural mash-up, but a mash-up filled with love and a lot of life and joy!

So a few months ago, before I went business travelling, I did a huge assignment on Nørrebro for Euroman - about ten pages. Euroman wanted to show a different side of Nørrebro, the good side, that the media find uninteresting to talk about.

I went out for a week during the mornings, afternoon, evenings, late nights and early mornings in the weekend trying to capture the heart and atmosphere of Nørrebro, wandering around and about knocking on random doors and asking random people in the streets to pose for me. Nothing dangerous about that ;-)

These are the shots that didn't made it into the magazine!

Remember to buy this month's issue of Euroman, where the danish director Nicolas Winding Refn is on the cover.