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Who am I?
Due to the seriousness of American Pictures I am often
perceived as a very serious person. So here on my personal homepage I
will try to relax a bit and show some other - more teasing - sides of
myself....
.....you can always
turn me on here:
A good combination of luck and laziness
There are many ways to describe oneself. Here I try to explain politically
- especially to Americans - how I ended up making American Pictures.
My
astrological chart
Since the personal tone of American Pictures raises many questions about
my personality I am constantly analyzed and asked out about my astrological
data. Now I can refer astrologers to this site where you can even compare
it to the chart of
Jacob
A. Riis. Since his is a flat horoscope you cannot completely compare
the plutonian forces said to shape the obscure minds of "slum photographers"
- as well as of the social losers they identify with.
My
curriculum vitae
For someone who has never held an honest job it seems difficult to write
a CV. So this one probably looks more like a diary. I bring it mainly
because I get tired of repeating myself in the endless interviews that
are an inevitable part of my job. Download it, re-write it - and let's
get on to more serious questions which are NOT ABOUT ME!
My family:
-
my
nuclear family - the small boring kind with no incest
and only few skeletons in the closet
-
my
larger world family with over 10,000 family members
whom I know by name
-
my
saintly family -
in case anybody after all the charges of
me being a KGB-agent, Ku Klux Klan friend, Nazi friend, mass murderer
friend, "nigger lover", junkie, criminal, prostitute etc.
should have started doubting my halo, I have worked out this top secret
document proving how I truly come of a family of saints.
My hobbies:
1. Hitchhiking...
...picking up hitchhikers .....or traveling with those who do neither.
Having hitchhiked more than
5 times around the globe I thought I had the world record until I saw
in Guinness that an American hitched even longer in the 60's.
Well, that was back in the days when you didn't have to wait very long
for a ride....
Today I enjoy picking up hitchhikers
on my tours in America and could write a whole book about the insights
they have given me. They have usually waited for days for a lift - not
least the
mass murderer who became part
of my updated show ....
Traveling in American ghettos
is also quite eventful. To have someone to share those experiences with
- as well as my highway solitude - I usually invite school friends, authors
as well as everyone in my audiences to go with me in my van.
Two of the better known were
Anita Roddick
- social activist and owner of the worldwide cosmetic chain The Body Shop
- and
Pia
Tafdrup - one of the most distinguished contemporary Danish poets.
They have both written about their startling encounters with the crushing
poverty of my American friends.
2.
Third World Development Assistance
Many foreign aid providers entertain lofty humanitarian ideas as veiled
excuses for exotic first class Third World traveling. While I hitchhiked
through Africa I became very skeptical of the racism involved in the way
we deliver development assistance and refused to have anything to do with
it for years.
Yet I have since found one
organization which works in a meaningful way, CARE. I
therefore volunteer much of my spare time to work for CARE in Bolivia,
Nepal, Guatemala and Thailand. You should look at
my
CARE page - if only to see that I can take more optimistic pictures
than seen in American Pictures.
3.
Newspaper muckraking
I love to write, but only publish it when I get sufficiently mad about
something. Somehow I get too overwhelmed by the injustices in America
and therefore mostly write about those I see in my old society. So most
of my articles here are written in Danish. But check out my letters on
ecology, the welfare state and others written for American friends.
4.
Genealogy
Like the family of everyone else mine goes way back before the birth of
Christ. Yet, I have done so much research on mine that I can now actually
prove it!
At this point I have recorded
10,061 people in my family tree. American genealogists might find many
ancestors we have in common - even blacks - since one of them was a black slave. Most are direct
ancestors such as
pharaohs
like Ramses II,
emperors like
Augustus and over 900 kings such as Alexander the Great,
Cyrus
the Great etc. See also my family's relationship with people who talked
to - or murdered -
Jesus, John
the Baptist, St. Paul, Plato, Socrates, and others who shaped modern
humanism.
My relationship to Jesus.....
I am invited to hold a serious talk on racism.....and the first question
I often get from American students - not least in Southern Baptist schools
- is: "What is your relationship to Jesus?" I know it is their
litmus test, but it always throws me off - private as I feel it is.
For how do you reply to frequent rhetorical statements such as "Jesus
changed my life" from people who show no outward evidence of e.g.
having crossed over to sit at "the Samaritan woman's well" by
making friends with the black community - or of trying to be "Good
Samaritans" by overcoming their fear of picking up hitchhikers, needy
people etc.?
So here on my personal home
page is my chance to "get back" at these students (as much as
I love them) and tell them about "my" relationship to Jesus:
Let me teasingly turn the rhetoric around and declare with equal hollowness:
"How I changed the life of Jesus!!!!"
For not only did "we" in my family change the life of
Jesus - however blasphemous it sounds - but "we" even helped
give him from early childhood the "poverty image" - the concern
for the least and the oppressed - which speaks so deeply to my heart.
Let me take you on a tour 2000 years back in time and show you just how!
Follow the Star of Bethlehem by clicking on this star
- and on each of the following pages.
See also
my
family's correspondence with Jesus in which Jesus refuses to cure
a sick member of my family on grounds of "acting on orders from higher
up."
Though we killed both
John
the Baptist and not long after
Jesus
- in addition to
one
of his disciples - the church fathers have nevertheless canonized
countless
members of my family
as saints. Since sainthood apparently is hereditary rewarding
- as you will see in my individual descriptions - a life lived in sin
and violence, I have long ago started polishing my own glory!
5.
hobby: To stay in touch with old friends
As a hitchhiker most of my time was spent visiting former friends
- just as much of my traveling is today. Since they mean a lot to me it
is an endless job to visit them - not least in prisons. Also I spend much
time writing them. For the last 28 years my Danish friends have received
Denmark's longest Christmas
letters (they say) - often 40-50 pages..
To commemorate my many deceased and not least murdered friends I have
now established
the first virtual cemetery.
Now you can sit at your computer and visit them and even send them your
own last words and flowers.
It is also a demanding job to visit all my old girlfriends and keep track
of their husbands and children. Right now I am struggling my way through
an endless row of 25 year anniversaries.
Here you can see all of them - black, white, yellow, Indians, Jews etc.
- in
a complete photo catalogue over
my old girlfriends!
6.
hobby: To set historic records "running down my country"
As the first person in history I have run all the way from
the river Elbe in Germany across Denmark and Sweden to the gulf of Bothnia:
see the map.
At least it hasn't been done since the soldiers of king Carl Gustav X.
walked dried shod across our frozen waters in 1658. For my record of 800
miles was simply not possible before the recent opening of two long bridges.
In other words, the laziness of my youth -
hitchhiking
- has today been replaced by 10-30 miles of unwinding running in my spare
time and then it is only natural to put these stretches end to end when
I as a lecturer I travel all over the country anyway. It is also my one-man-demonstration
against the environmental damage I cause with all my car driving.
7.
hobby: World's greatest collector of e-mail jokes
American friends constantly send me e-mail jokes. Here is a selection
of everything from Clinton's sex life to how you best kill a republican
- certainly not all politically correct or drawing-room. Remember that
they are copyrighted under American Pictures, if you retell them.....well,
that might be yet another joke on the Internet.
My
job
Hm?......I think you better go to
American Pictures.
If you think you know me by now, let's make friends.
This
page in Danish
Copyright
© 1997
AMERICAN PICTURES; All rights reserved.
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