The Village Life photographs were taken in various villages throughout the Faroe Islands. The series disputes the romanticized discourses that people have often used to portray Faroese villages as storybook communities where time stands still and villagers live in perfect harmony with nature and one another.

Bygdarlívið presents a much harsher reality, one fraught with symbolic specters of overexposure and degeneration: doors that can no longer be opened, broken or sealed windows, severely corroded hinges, abraded walls, and corrugated sheets of metal that bleed rust as they struggle to maintain order, form, and function.

Randi Ward is a writer, translator, lyricist, and photographer from West Virginia. She earned her MA in Cultural Studies from the University of the Faroe Islands and is a recipient of The American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize. Ward is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in Asymptote, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, World Literature Today, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vencil: Anthology of Contemporary Faroese Literature, and other publications. For more information, visit: www.randiward.com/about