Colecciones de arte

Kuhmo, 1994

DESCRIPTION

These are the names of cities and also titles of photographs whose inhabitants have been photographed by Männikkö. These works belong to the author's most widely recognised series, one that defines a realist and sociological body of work.

Li, Kuivaniemi, Kuhmo, Utajärvi, Sodanklylä, Kittlä are names of cities in Northern Finland, in the Lapp region the artist knows very well, for he was born in this area and he lives there still. These works convey a characteristically artistic approach, although they are clearly influenced by German photography and by a somewhat kitsch rural aesthetic. Despite their being portraits of clearly solitary people, most of whom are elderly, these pictures are not sentimental or falsely emotional. They are just as far from photographs by Salgado as they are from passing tourist shots, for they were taken by someone very familiar with the people in them as well as the social phenomena they depict.

In general, the photos were taken inside the houses, only once is a person portrayed outside, and carrying out activities that are not only ordinary but usually utterly insignificant. However, the significance of the atmosphere gradually comes clear when observing these portraits, as the central subject loses significance little by little, leaving room for a narrative about the things in a setting that is poor yet full of vestiges, traces of a story of which the photographer offers us a fragment.

The contemporaneousness of this work is based on the ability to create a rigorous composition from this complex popular imagery and to do so by fusing the documentary practice with the modern organization of photographic space. R. O.