Santeri Tuori

Forest

The Forest series has been captured mainly on the remote island of Kökar in the archipelago of Åland during the past seven years. Certain landscapes were chosen, then filmed and photographed over and over again from the exact same spot. The series is divided into prints and moving images: In Forest prints, photographs from the same landscape are superimposed on top of each other. The result is a layered image with black-and-white and color images blending into one. The image is layered also in the sense that images taken in different time periods or even years come together in the same landscape. Time in these images cannot be counted, not in years, not in split seconds—time just is.

The moving images in the Forest series combine black-and-white photographs with color video. The superimposing is done either by projecting the video on a photograph or with the help of an editing program. It results in a layered image, which contains the sharpness and richness of a photograph and the movement and time of a video. As much as the viewers are in front of a forest, they are confronted with photography and the questions surrounding it. Tuori states, "many of my previous works have been dealing with photography and the traditions of portraiture. The Forest series is a clear continuation of that and refers to different subject matters; for these works traditions of visual arts are just as important as the traditions of photography.”