Abstract of the accomplished photographic work
“War is a Disaster,” examines the social landscape of past conflict in The Republic of Finland. The Winter and Continuation Wars were fought between Finland and the Soviet Union from 1939-1944. Both ended in Finnish defeat, but are commemorated today as decisive moments that secured the independence of the Finnish state.
The work traces the remains of these conflicts through architecture and the physical landscape, with a specific emphasis on how collective memory is upheld and reproduced through social interactions. The work makes historical consciousness maintained by films visible in glimpses, such as the gestures of players in a war game spontaneously re-enacting death in combat.
The work is presented as an exhibition and a book that combine my landscape and architectural images with historical images from the Finnish Army Image Archive and vernacular images from my private family albums, as well as texts from war film pre-production files and other documents.
Description of the project you intend to pursue through the Prize
I will finish my ongoing project “Malmi”, in which I document postmodern architecture and the social role it plays in a northern district of Helsinki.
Malmi is a district in the Finnish capital. Originally a village, it was heavily developed in the 1980’s to produce a sprawling postmodernist cityscape of housing blocks, office buildings and a massive shopping center. 40-years later the unique postmodern architecture of the area is unappreciated by city planners. While the architecture has grown to sustain one of the most multicultural and socially-varied communities in the city, the dilapidated projects are likely to be demolished in the near future,
I will continue my practice of documenting social landscapes, concentrating on the interactions between people, architecture and the culture and social roles they house in the area of Malmi. For the publication, I intend to expand my practice by intervening and working on the images further in an analog colour darkroom.