Icy Prospects #66, 2014
Pigment print
160 x 201 cm
Jorma
Puranen is renowned for his works that explore the interplay between
past and present. His practice spans ethnographic photography,
historical portraiture, and landscape painting, often drawing
inspiration from archives and museums. However, his approach to the
archive is undisciplined - fragmentary rather than systematic. In
Puranen’s work, the photograph becomes a space for reinterpreting a
fluid past, where past and present converge. Reflection itself emerges
as a central theme, and ultimately, Puranen seems to suggest that light
is the only true reality to which the photograph has access.
In his Icy Prospects series, which began in 2005, Puranen creates
dreamlike landscapes which draw from mythology, history, and the Arctic
fascination with polar exploration. His images depict places which
appear borderless, as if floating in time - a reminder of the immensity
of the unknown which can be associated with life above the Arctic
Circle. Using a painted, lacquered wooden board as a mirror, he
photographs the reflections of the surrounding landscapes, producing
ethereal images which capture the sublime quality of Nordic scenery.