Esko Männikkö
Pudasjärvi (Finland), 1959

The scarce presence of Nordic artists in the habitual channels of contemporary art make Männikkö an exception in the current sphere of photography. He studied and has carried out his artistic activities in different Finnish cities, although his humble origins –he is from a poor fishing village- is a constant in his work. The majority of his images are portraits of the inhabitants of the forests of Lapland and the plains of Ostrobothnia, in Northern Finland. This is a region in decline, whose inhabitants have left for the city in droves. Those who have remained are mostly single men, hunters, fishermen and many unemployed. This is one of the reasons women are rarely portrayed in his photographs. Männikkö’s work unfolds between anthropological and social documentary and purely aesthetic creation, his work method also falling between these two aspects. The artist lives with his models for days, speaking with them, drinking with them and entering their houses as a guest, as a witness who is not a bothersome stranger but someone who can get close enough to create this work. But Männikkö’s perspective also stems from a very specific frame of mind and aesthetic sense: all the people portrayed are inside their homes (only rarely do they appear outdoors), in everyday attitudes and surrounded by the customary objects of their environment. All this results in imagery that is more premeditated than it would be if it were the simple social documentation of the decadence of a region of the country. Each image as a whole offers us a great deal of information about the people portrayed, about the specific social group and geographical and historical sector they belong to and about their tastes and habits. From 1996 to 1998, Männikkö was invited to work in the United States but this did not alter his work method. There, he chose to work with disenfranchised populations such as that of Batesville, an American region largely populated by Mexican emigrants whom he portrayed with the same humaneness and distance that makes him an objective spectator. An important aspect of his work is the actual presentation of each photograph, always in colour and always in formats that are very different from those of his German counterparts, to whom, on the other hand, he is so close with regard to his objectivity and social analysis. The artist frames each photograph himself, with painted frames bought at the very street markets and flea markets where the people photographed buy and sell their belongings. The combination of the modern photographic images and those restored old-fashioned frames give rise to an object that goes beyond the photographic image itself, conferring on the work a value as object and completing the aesthetic information about the protagonists they depict. R. O.

Li, 1995
Kuivaniemi, 1991
Kuhmo, 1994

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.

Victoriano, Basteville, 1997

The series of portraits carried out in Basteville, which, as in his other portraits, gives rise to the title of the series -next to each person’s name, which individualises the images- are an exception in Männikkö’s work, for they are photographs taken of people who are far from their habitual settings and in an absolutely different set of circumstances. In Texas, the Finnish artist found a population very similar to that he was used to portraying in his own country: a group of people banished from society, estranged from its customs, with few belongings and without much to do during the day. Mexas is the name with which Männikkö has dubbed this strange but foreseeable fusion of Texas and Mexico, a fusion he portrayed by individualising its subjects in an aesthetic style resembling that of his earlier works.
In this series, the image of the subjects is foremost. Whereas in the earlier series, the importance of the objects and the simple décor of the living quarters were all important, on this occasion the physical features of each individual are highlighted in each picture. Here , we once again observe the importance of the frame as visual enclosure of the photograph, an enclosure that is inevitably representative of to the central figure of the image, reinforcing that poor nature and belonging to a certain rural and kitsch aesthetic that emphasises the sociological character of these works. R. O.