Ville Lenkkeri: The Petrified Forest

Mikko Rikala
Towards Nothing

Published by: Lugemik, Tallinn,  2016
Format: ca. 19,5 x 14,5 cm, Softcover
Pages: 150 pages
Texts: Harry Salmenniemi
Artists: Mikko Rikala
Language: English / Finnish
Design by: Tuomas Kortteinen
ISBN 978-9949-9781-6-8

It feels as if there is no time or place. It’s possible that there is no time or place. I feel like saying: as if they were floating.                               

Harry Salmenniemi 

Towards Nothing is a book of visual and textual poetry. The title indicates a journey with an unidentified destination, but it is more likely an attempt to reach a state of pure being. Mikko Rikala’s first book is a monograph juxtaposing his photography-based works with a text by the Finnish writer, Harry Salmenniemi.

In his works, Mikko Rikala often investigates the boundaries between rationality and irrationality. The images in the book depict a certain tone of objectivity and reveal a meditative state through Rikala’s way of observation. Harry Salmenniemi’s poetic, diary-like text equilibrates and complements Mikko Rikala’s pictures creating a delicate balance between the sense of rationality and irrationality.

Rikala often utilizes the act of repetition as a metaphor of the passing of time. The content and structure of the book are constructed by the reappearance of certain themes and images. In the work Morning Is Evening in Reverse the traces of sunlight indicate the cycle of a day, measured by the passing of time and the changes of light between sunrise and sunset. As if time would exist in a constant loop; it opens up our senses towards a new way of perception.

Judit Schuller

Joakim Eskildsen
American Realities

Published by: Steidl Verlag, Göttingen,  2016
Format: ca. 24 x 20 cm, Hardcover
Pages: 120 pages
Texts: Joakim Eskildsen, Natasha del Torro, Barbara Kiviat
Artists: Joakim Eskildsen
Language: English
Design by: Joakim Eskildsen
ISBN 978-3-86930-734-3
Steidl

In 2010 more Americans were living below the poverty line than at any time since 1959, when the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting this data. In 2011, Kira Pollack, Director of Photography at Time, commissioned Joakim Eskildsen to photograph this growing crisis affecting nearly 46.2 million Americans. Based on census data, Eskildsen, together with journalist Natasha del Toro, travelled to the places with the highest poverty rates in New York, California, Louisiana, South Dakota and Georgia over seven months to document the lives of those behind the statistics. The people Eskildsen has portrayed — those who struggle to make ends meet, who have lost their jobs or homes and often live in unhealthy conditions—usually remain invisible in a society to which the myth of the American Dream still remains strong. Many of Eskildsen’s subjects hold there is no such dream anymore — merely the American Reality.