“Sielunmaisema” – exhibition until September 22, 2022
In my previous post I talked a bit about my students. The class of spring 2022 was very intense and special… and when the semester ended, everyone felt like it came to an end too soon. So within two weeks they had decided that they would do a small exhibition in the fall and had even reserved a venue for it.
They needed a theme to work on during the summer. I suggested “Sielunmaisema” — a bit hard to translate, but maybe something like “the residence of my soul” — yes, not a good translation, but I cannot come up with a better one now.
A friend of mine, documentarist Petteri Saario, often talks about “sielunmaisema”: how each and every one of us has a certain place, a landscape, a scenery somewhere where we feel the most secure, safe and at home; something which is engraved in the essence of our wellbeing. And looking at the images now in the exhibition, it is interesting to see how this translates to these photographers.
I’ve only spent one semester with this group – however intense the course was – so I cannot say I know them that well, but looking at the images I can with almost 100% accuracy tell who is the photographer behind each image. Like the landscape or the subject of the particular image is a quintessential part of that particular photographer.
I personally do think the core of what we do is the journey — the passage of time and the learning we do together — not so much some final goal or a single image we manage to make and/or print. The images are merely reflections of our existence during that journey. Which hopefully is shared with others, also on the same path.
Just by coincidence I was reading Peter Turnleys post from Paris yesterday (check my fb) and he was referring to his students and things he’d like to discuss with them. His words resonated with me when he talked about “(…) texture of an on-going process of appreciating the soft light of existence and always approaching it with love, care and kindness”.
I don’t think it could be expressed more beautifully than that.
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The exhibition is in Loviisa, in the lovely retro theatre Marilyn until the 22nd September, open daily.
