Ten thousand steps a day
Over the past weeks I have walked around ten thousand steps through Hämeenlinna almost every day. I let my intuition carry me and discovered the town in my own way, with the medium format camera that is my constant companion. In between, short outings with Terho, the town's photography legend, then alone again, music in my ears. I love being out without plan or destination, focusing on nothing but feeling and seeing. The less I plan and prescribe, the more the right pictures find me.
What strikes me again and again is the relaxed atmosphere everywhere. Drivers who let you cross the street unasked. Finns who seem shy and reserved at first sight and then, in personal conversation, are warm and open. In these weeks, many new contacts have grown, and well over 1,500 photos.
Out of all those steps, two bodies of work have grown, and a small selection now hangs in the Kulttuurikonttori, the culture house where I was also allowed to work. While hanging the show, a thought came to me: I do not want to show single pictures only. Whoever wishes should be able to see the whole story of the two series. Because only in the series do you see what lies behind: the story I want to tell, my inner rooms, which find their expression in the two series Hidden Places and Heimat.
Heimat is the intuitive one of the two series: deliberately uncontrolled, experimental, tracing the feeling of the moment. Through the movement of the camera during the exposure, the forms of the landscape dissolve, condense and reconnect. What emerges I cannot fully foresee, and that is exactly what interests me. Heimat is not a geographical place but an inner state in which perception, memory and sensation are interwoven. And the pictures leave the viewer room for pictures of their own.
Hidden Places is the exact opposite and yet the same search: very constructive, deliberately seeking, arranging the surfaces into a composition. Deserted places that open up in passing. A staircase, a facade, a courtyard where the light tips over for a moment. Often nobody is in sight, and yet the places do not feel empty but charged, as if someone had just left or someone were about to arrive. You know what you are seeing, and a moment later you are no longer sure.
Two series can hardly be more different, and yet both are part of me: my inner rooms, captured in very different ways. Once composed and built, once released and felt. The full stories of both series are in the journal.
Two series could not be more different, and yet both are part of me.“Note from the Kulttuurikonttori
But the work did not end with the hanging. One question would not let go of me: what happens to these pictures once I am back in Germany? That is what the next story tells.