Something about working and the starting points in series Meaning in Life (2008) and Steps Aside (2010)
"One day, while visiting a flea market I find a box with a hundred holiday slides photographed by an unknown traveler from 1960´s. I buy the box, and finding the slides turns into an adventure for me. I get to see the snowy “Alps”, new towns, colorful streets and foreign people. I watch the slides again and again, and I stop for a while to all the interesting places and moments. I start to imagine what happens behind the slides.
Who was the photographer? I doubt that I’ll ever find out the truth. I make suggestions. He must have been a 24-year-old man, a student, who’s traveling in Europe with a childhood friend by a red Volkswagen. But what is a 24-year-old woman doing in the same scenes in the 21stcentury in Finland? That’s something the original photographer could hardly have imagined.
While traveling, one should be open and receptive to all the new things, but at the same time alert and prepared to face difficulties. A voyage is like a whole of a lifetime, only in miniature size, shrunken and accelerated.
I make a stage by projecting the slides on a huge background. I`m the director, and a friend of mine is performing. It is like a play with changing scenes, just me and my camera as the audience. It is nothing else but a play and I let the viewer see it. In the setting there are two different periods: the 1960s and the present, together and overlapping. I see no reason in covering any contradictions in lighting conditions or clothing. This is what happened in front of my camera and it was real. In the finished photographs one can see a new constructed reality and stories, which are real and justified."
My first series with this method consists of three pictures and it’s called the Meaning in Life. The first two images tell a short synopsis of life, and the third image, the final, closes up the series.
The second series, Steps Aside, has developed from the situations of the first one. A woman is found in various scenes with changing identities. There is at least as many stories as there are images in the series.
Who was the photographer? I doubt that I’ll ever find out the truth. I make suggestions. He must have been a 24-year-old man, a student, who’s traveling in Europe with a childhood friend by a red Volkswagen. But what is a 24-year-old woman doing in the same scenes in the 21stcentury in Finland? That’s something the original photographer could hardly have imagined.
While traveling, one should be open and receptive to all the new things, but at the same time alert and prepared to face difficulties. A voyage is like a whole of a lifetime, only in miniature size, shrunken and accelerated.
I make a stage by projecting the slides on a huge background. I`m the director, and a friend of mine is performing. It is like a play with changing scenes, just me and my camera as the audience. It is nothing else but a play and I let the viewer see it. In the setting there are two different periods: the 1960s and the present, together and overlapping. I see no reason in covering any contradictions in lighting conditions or clothing. This is what happened in front of my camera and it was real. In the finished photographs one can see a new constructed reality and stories, which are real and justified."
My first series with this method consists of three pictures and it’s called the Meaning in Life. The first two images tell a short synopsis of life, and the third image, the final, closes up the series.
The second series, Steps Aside, has developed from the situations of the first one. A woman is found in various scenes with changing identities. There is at least as many stories as there are images in the series.
