Joakim Eskildsen

Joakim Eskildsen started photography under the Danish Royal Court photographer, Mrs. Rigmor Mydtskov. In 1994, he moved to Finland to learn the craft of photo book making with Jyrki Parantainen and Pentti Sammallahti, at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. He graduated with a Master of Arts four years later.

Joakim Eskildsen often works with his wife, the writer Cia Rinne. During the 1990s, they created their first collaborative projects: Nordic Signs (1995), a collection of photographs taken in Northern Europe that constitute an hymn to nature; Bluetide (1997), the story of Apulia, a Portuguese fishing town touched by erosion; and iChikenMoon (1999), which won the best foreign title in 2000 at the Phoyo-Eye books & Prints annual Awards.

In 2007, Joakim Eskildsen exhibited The Roma Journeys for the first time at the Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center. This series is a testimony to the Roma people’s lives and journeys captured in seven different countries. The book received the Amilcare Ponchielli Award given by the Dutch Academy of photography. 

Joakim Eskildsen then went on to realize three more series: Home Works, a photographic ode to family and time, American Realities in 2011, an exploration of adverse effects of the economic crisis on the country’s population and rising poverty, and Cuba in 2013, a testimonial of Havana’s architectural evolution.

Three of his books were published by Steidl.