photographing joakim

joakim is one of those people that you connect with
without much effort
he is just there being himself
and in his own thoughts
letting you to create with the camera
and capture the beauty of the moment.

irena

"a hanging-artist"
(I photographed Irena last september)

have you?

have you guessed you yourself would not continue?
have you dreaded those earth-beetles?
have you feared the future would be nothing to you?
is today nothing?
is the beginningless past nothing?
if the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.
[walt whitman]

an actor to be

this young man is from Norway and studying drama at a school in Stockholm. I made these pictures for his book.

photographing Caroline

she is a dancer and she asked me to do some portraits and I thought that the most proper way to portrait her was while dancing ... then, she danced for me..

a sign

Suddenly came today to my thoughts a sign that it was in my room in London while I was studying there. I rented this room from a girl from South Africa while she was on vacations abroad so I had her furniture and everything she had carried from home. between them, she had this sign that attracted my curiosity because it wasn’t just sweet in its naivety but, it told much more than that. It had a kind of warmth and something we all need everyday, a feeling of being part of a community and the necessity of being recognize and acknowledged—the childish figures show what you get when you have a kind gesture.
I felt welcome and home in that room in a house with people coming from different countries and environments, with nothing more in common but the fact that we were design students at the same college.

the sign was made by South African school children, back in the late -80s

no!

and when I saw your face with staring eyes
and drops of sweat running down your forehead
I understood that you were about to tell me something
that I wouldn’t like, that it would change my life
and state of mind for a long time

I didn’t want to see you there
I didn’t want to hear what you have done
what you have to say or what you have to explain
there was nothing to explain anymore

And the only thing that I regretted was, that I believed in you
And that I gave you my love and my self, in a way
so, please, not excuses, not tears, not apologizes
I’ll probably be able to forget but not to forgive...

(photo: from a performance of göteborgsoperan ballet
at vitabergsparken, stockholm, august 3, 2008)

signs grove

like many other things, as soon as you take them off theirs context, become something else. they tell you some other stories, wake your fantasy up. they can even become a work of art as for instance, Duchamp's "ready-made"

["The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. " m. duchamp]

i found these signs by the sea in Helsinki.

a chair

... it reminded me a cathedral,
probably a little bit clumsy, but it had the attraction of a thing that wakes your fantasy up.
It's more than a chair that you can actually sit on, well your kids...I had to take a picture of it because it was for me an example of art expressed through a recognizably shape but not for being used.
(seeing at kiasma's restaurant in helsinki)

the ability to think in a different way

I've just heard this line while seeing a film and I
think that this is what a designer have to have in order

to create new things, to get further limits and trends.
because as soon as trends become recognized and
everybody follows them, they are on their way out, 

they have become old.

in order to be capable to create things that last longer, you need to
put your self outside the boundaries and work crossover disciplines,
because the design principles are the same independent on 

what you are designing.

the greatest thing you can create is the one that can be
perceived as timeless and therefore always contemporary.

(photo: kalle åkesson, 1994. a ceramic bowl with printed
pattern: botvid & fredés)

looking at kiasma

[the term chiasma comes from the Greek χίασμα, which is related to the Greek letter Χ and means "crossing"]




finish design in the lavatory




oil painting by sami lukkarinen
(kiasma—the museum for contemporary art in helsinki)
some of my impressions...july 11, 2008
"beauty is on its way back into contemporary art." milla unkila.