‘I Am Fat’ Exhibition

They’ve had enough. They refuse to be ashamed. They refuse to hide. And they’ve had enough of being shouted at. Stared at. Laughed at. Spat at. Of being objects of ridicule and hate on social media. In a new series of photos, Danish photographer and World Press Photo Award winner Marie Hald portrays young Scandinavian women who insist on being themselves. 

Fat.

Some of them are Instagram activists and have chosen to stop only posting selfies of their faces, but to show their bodies. Including on the beach. And in bikinis. Some of them are activists in their daily lives by—as they say—“simply by taking up space the way they do” and once in a while by forcing themselves to do something provocative like eating ice cream in public.

Marie Hald’s portraits of them are beautiful. Because that is how she sees them. As beautiful. “This is not about promoting fatness. And this goes for me as well as for the women whose portraits I have taken. It’s about the permission to exist. Without being shamed.”

This exhibition was created in collaboration with the documentary Fat Front, directed by Louise Unmack Kjeldsen and Louise Detlefsen, which is screening at this year’s IDFA.