Ditte Haarløv Johnsen: Maputo Diary

After more than twenty years photographing life in Mozambique—its people, the city, the civil war, friends, struggles, addiction, love, togetherness, a sense of belonging, and, generally, everyday life in the Mozambican capital—Haarløv Johnsen created a photographic archive depicting the country’s history, the relationships between people, how they loved, how they suffered, how they stood together, and how they continued to fight for a better future. – Metal Magazine

Disko Bay is proud to present Maputo Diary, a deeply personal and visual masterpiece by the Danish photographer and filmmaker Ditte Haarløv Johnsen. The book brings together 25 years of photographic work from Mozambique’s capital, Maputo — the city where Haarløv Johnsen herself grew up during the civil war and has subsequently returned to over the past two decades.

Through 121 photographs, accompanied by diary notes and new texts, Maputo Diary portrays life, love, and survival among people living on the margins of society, blending social documentary with artistic investigation in images of friends, family, and everyday moments in Maputo. At its heart lies Haarløv Johnsen’s friendship with the “Manas” (“Sisters”) — a group of transgender individuals, many of whom are no longer alive. Maputo Diary stands as both a personal testimony and a universal story — one that finds beauty, dignity, and humanity even in life’s most vulnerable moments.

“Maybe that’s what Maputo Diary is too. An insistence on bearing witness to the lives of others when nobody else was there to make sure they didn’t just disappear.” — Ditte Haarløv Johnsen, Maputo Diary

Ditte Haarløv Johnsen (b. 1977) is an award-winning Danish documentary photographer and filmmaker who grew up in Mozambique, where her parents settled after the country gained independence from Portugal. As a teenager, she moved to Denmark with her father but continued to photograph during her travels back to Maputo, where her mother and youngest sister remained. She has studied at the National Film School of Denmark, Ryerson University in Canada and Fatamorgana – The Danish School of Art Photography. Her award-winning documentary films have been shown at numerous international festivals and the series Maputo Diary has been exhibited in various stages at Brandts, Odense (2006), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2010), Galleri Image, Aarhus (2011), Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen (2013), LaChambre, Strasbourg (2018), The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen (2021) and Le Centre Culturel Franco-Mozambicain, Mozambique (2024).