Jorma Puranen has become known for his works that arouse considerations bridging the past and the present. His subject matter spans ethnographic photography, illustrations of scholarly works, historical portraiture, and landscape painting, with points of departure often found in archives and museums. However, his approach to the archive is undisciplined - fragmentary rather than systematic. His method has also proposed fictive interpretations of his themes, the image becoming a space for readdressing a fluid past. His photographs are both of the past and the present; in Roland Barthes’ terms, ‘there and then’ becomes an experience of ‘here and now.’ In Puranen’s photographs, the reflection of light serves to mediate the images and functions as their metaphor. It often covers or blurs our access to the images, thus adding layers of uncertainty to historical objects. Reflection itself emerges as a central theme for Puranen, who appears to suggest that light is the only true reality to which the photograph has access.