The Fight She Lost
Lene Marie Fossen (1986–2019)
At age 10, Lene Marie Fossen, a Norwegian photographer, decided to stop eating in an effort to stop time and remain a child. In a twist of cruel irony, she achieved that goal, having never had a period or even breasts. Her body finally gave out, and she died at age 33.
I didn’t think I could ever see a human being more emaciated than the children of Biafra I saw on television as a child, two million children starving to death, whose images still haunt me. Then I watched a German documentary on Fossen, Lene Marie, or the True Face of Anorexia.
Fossen fell in love with the camera at age 15 when she found something, at last, that could stop time. She liked to photograph children but was particularly intrigued by old people with furrowed, withered faces. Perhaps she took pictures of what she wanted to remain (a child) and of an old age she knew in her heart she would never experience.
She also used the camera to document her own life as an anorexic, exhibiting 50 self-portraits at the “Nordic Light Festival of Photography“ in 2017.
Most anorexics hide their bodies but not Fossen. She used her body as art, taking pictures of her body, documenting her decline in images collected for a book called The Gatekeeper. The photos were exhibited in Oslo after her death.
