PARANVO

INTERVIEW: ALTERNATIVE PROCESSES

Theme: Alternative processes
Fotograf Magazine
Summer issue 2023


During my Nordic Analog residency at Cyan Darkroom,
the Norwegian Fotograf magazine interviewed me about my artistic practise
and alternative photographic processes.



“
1: What is you background (short) and why did you choose to work with alternative processes?
I am a visual artist from Finland and my background is in the fine arts and photography. I've had solo exhibitions in nature and in gallery spaces. I've participated in numerous joint and group exhibitions in Finnish galleries and museums and I graduated with my MA from Aalto University's photography department in Finland, 2020. It is natural for me to work with alternative processes in photography because it has been that way from the beginning for me. I am always looking for ways to develop in my artistic practise and work with new techniques. That is what keeps my drive on, to feel in a way like an alchemist of art. My practice is experimental and exploratory, while at the same time I have focus on combining art, scientific methods, bioart and visual research. For me alternative processes in photography have a certain sense of magic and I always seek ways of revealing something invisible or unknown in the nature and bring it visible and multimeaningful via the freedom of art. Photographic processes and combining them with other art techniques seems limitless and that's what has always interested me the most in photography.



2: What does a slow and analogue process ad to an image, a project and to your own work?
My projects are long-term, and I work with experimental photography, video, light, installation, sculpture and bioart. That is why I am friends with analogue photo processes because my projects usually take time (years) with research, making field trips, learning techniques and going experimental with them, like with soil chromatograpgs which I've developed to make from other forest materials aswell e.g. lichens. I feel analogue process ads perhaps a more autehntic, intimate and crafty feeling to an image for the viewer and also for the artist. Slow process through the sensation of making something physical gives meaning for my daily life as an artist and it allows me to ponder the contents also more profoundly of my images.

The connection to nature and nature mysticism are at the core of my art. In particular, I am fascinated by the reality claim and agency of a photograph as a revealer, concealer and delimiter of reality. In our Western culture, what nature photographs that focus on aesthetics do not show us, and what nature does not necessarily show to the impatient eye of the busyness of everyday life, is at the heart of my work. The slower processes of a phtograph. For example, the soil is a living entity under our feet, but we are constantly in a state of oblivion with it, as if in a dream. Soil has been a big theme in my recent projects. My artistic field trips to forests of nature reserves, meteorite craters and the fells of the Finnish Sámi Land combine my interest in soil and addressing it throught photographic represenation.



3: Do you think that the analogue processes will get a revival in our digital age? (And if so, why)
In my opinion analogue processes have been making a come back for many years already. I see it in the contemporary art and photography scene and I hear it in the conversations. I think people and artists have a need of understanding the medium of a photograph now even more than ever since it has taken over our evey day lives through the masses of images we see (Internet, TV, screens etc.) Photographs define how we understand the world around us. In order to understand the photograph itself one needs to go to the early techniques of photography making, dig into the experimental and feel the materia in one's hands. In addition to the making of analogue images I think is also imortant to read and know the theory of (analogue) photography. We need professionals in photography who have the know-how and ability to read photographs and study how we understand the photographic reality, for example with AI. We need to think about what kind of a witness of reality the photographs of today are and what is the medium. 
“