1. What themes do you pursue in your work and why?
Questions around photography and visual arts in general interest me. I am also interested in people and our surroundings. How we depict them, how we have depicted them and how we can depict them?
Themes such as landscape, portraiture, time, identity and tradition are important for me.
2. Tell us about your current project?
Forest is a series of landscape photographs, videos and their combinations. I have been filming the forest on a remote island of Kökar during several years. Over and over again I have returned to the same spots to film and photograph the same landscape.
In the final pieces, I superimpose material from one spot into a single image. In the Forest videos a black-and-white photograph serves as a canvas for a video of the same spot. The photographs become magically alive.
In my other project, Sky, I am trying to depict sky as an individual landscape, not subordinate to ground or flora. Also this work consists of many images superimposed on one another.
Photographing is to me like collecting working material. Editing is a crucial part of the process. I usually take an image as a starting point and add forms and colors to it. The process is very intuitive and there is a lot of trying, erasing and replacing involved. Often the result is a surprise. I am left wondering where all these images came from. Do I really carry them inside me?
3. Do you have some advice for Photography students?
Try different things and different teachers. Succeed and fail miserably. Use the teachers and the resources of the school to the fullest. Don´t forget your fellow students. They will be your friends and colleagues in just a few years time.
4. What was your most interesting experience when studying at the Photography programme in Aalto?
It was probably the funeral party of a fellow student. It was such a cathartic experience I had never experienced anything like it before.
5. What do you think is the most important thing when studying or teaching at the Photography programme in Aalto?
To be open and honest to yourself and others.