Late night melancholy

A short walk around Kuhmoinen the other night. Me and everything in an orange glow. The street lights are so bright it hurts my eyes. And yet there's nobody to walk under them. The whole town is evacuated.

Rothko

The bloom effect from the street lights.

I love primary colours and the gas station looked nothing like gas station.

Small museum. A wooden box full of history.

This town is full of mysteries. X marks the spot. Enter the black lodge.

Last Tuesday

These photos are from one of the many beautiful places by the lake Päijänne. Me and my old friend went there to investigate. For a moment it felt like we were making a document about Finnish nature. I started hearing David Attenborough's voice in my head - it was time to leave. Later that day we played some disc golf. Good times. Since then it's been windy and rainy.

I leave when the leaves turn red. They are like reversed traffic lights.

Sometimes it feels like you're already walking in the past. Like you don't have to wait to see that it's an unique moment you're having right now. This is what really inspires me, the things you can't repeat. You've got this one-off chance to see it. There. Did you see it? Or properly put, do you see it? Can you see that things are replaced by other things? If you're concentrating on seeing that thing, you miss this. So you should be constantly open. It's like dancing and getting the rhythm right.

Photography is about unique moments, successful and unsuccessful shots. Painting is about that too. But in painting, the thing you observe, the thing you're trying to catch is also at the same time the outcome of your observation. Plus the material side of it... It's like the question about our existence: are we this body or/and this mind, and where is the mind located? Is the painting only an illusion hovering on paint and other stuff? Or is the material you're using actually the pure substance of the painting - inseparable from the form and content? Can the matter come first? For me painting is material image even if it's aiming to be ethereal and immaterial.

I like to see things come and go, whether it was tangible or rapid moments. In both material and immaterial image moments can be halted before they're completely lost. Catch it, throw it, lose it... or stop it in mid-flight.

(Home)town

This, my friends, is the town of Kuhmoinen. Me and my parents moved here when I was 10 years old. I came here for this summer after almost 10 years. Nothing has changed here. It's a town in a snow globe.

Kind of sad atmosphere hovers on this small town. But it's not hopeless sadness. It's a pretty little town with some kind of freshness. Maybe it's because I've never felt like home here. Always like a visitor. Hence the freshness. I still look at this place like I just arrived here.

But that's how it's been everywhere. I'm maybe the most static person I know. But still I feel like I'm constantly on the move, ready to immediately change place or my camouflage. So I really don't know where I'm from if somebody asks. I'm from here?

Everything is on the move. Me and my whereabouts. In places like Kuhmoinen it's easy to forget the speed of change. Every now and then it can be a shock to leave this dreamland and realize the flow of time. All you need is a place to sit down and the world spins around you. 

Talking about spinning... the photo below was taken on a merry-go-round in front of my old primary school here. That is the wall of the school. It felt like time machine. The flowing of time and the brick wall:

Animal collection

Gotta catch 'em all! No animals were harmed (except the fish by my dad. "But it's ok to eat fish. Cause they don't have any feelings." As Kurt put it.).

There are animals. It's pretty scary when you realize your connection to them. Especially these animals as a group have some kind of uncanny and dark presence in them. Makes me wish I had photos of birds and snakes too. They'd belong to this nocturnal animalia. Eyes glowing in the dark. But still.. it's good to have these around. I live among them. I like the idea. Do you?

Things I'll remember without photos: The forest at day

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." -Oscar Wilde

So many small things. Too much information. Could spend years exploring the changing nature but it moves too slowly for my tastes right now. I'd like to take photos of people and rapidly passing moments. It's only these landscapes and plants I see nowadays. They are timeless and breathe slowly. Living here is like a retreat of sorts.

This is why I see a culture shock coming in my way... in a form of millions of people when traveling to Japan. Well, just seeing some unfamiliar face downtown here would blow my mind. But what are the chances of that ever happening. I'm living in a town of some 2000 people. Oh well, never been a social type anyways...