REFLECTIONS - Archipelago Series on Aluminum
REFLECTIONS
Archipelago Sea, Nauvo, Finland ~ Archipelago Series
I took this photo during a hot July day that was turning into a Finnish summer evening in the archipelago. As is the case in the North, the sun lingers and lingers above the horizon deep into the night, and I was fascinated how the reeds were playing with ripples of the Baltic sea.
What I captured was a reflective moment. And not just the physical reflection, but something deeper where my ideas and thoughts were reflecting on the events of the day. I used to stare at trees and leaves moving in the wind for ages when I was a little boy. I enjoyed letting my mind wander, my thoughts dancing on the ripples of the sea.
The Idea of Abstraction
Photographs are photographs of something. But when you abstract the object from the original subject, the reasons and metaphors multiply. Maybe because this gives you the freedom to interpret of what the image represents specifically to you.
Maybe reflections on the water remind us about memories and past. A feeling that could be melancholy about the day gone by. Perhaps the sea water symbolizes the birth place of all of us. As a whole this image to me symbolizes a new beginning with memories of the past lingering.
CONTACT VESA.LOIKAS@GMAIL.COM
ANY QUESTIONS
MY HISTORY IN PRINTING
I have been been printing my images well over twenty years and last ten years professionally. I am always amazed how the printed photograph transforms itself depending on the materials and inks used. The photograph becomes a physical object instead of just pixels on the screen. Lately I have been using aluminum as the material of my choice. I also often print on different kinds of museum quality papers and I have been experimenting with birch plywood lately.
ALUMINUM SURFACE
The reason I use brushed aluminum as the material for printing this piece are the reflections it gives back. Any photograph condenses three-dimensional world into two dimensional photo. And thus it is far removed from the original location and subject. However, somehow the reflections of the aluminum bring us back the actual reeds in the archipelago, in addition to all of the connotations and metaphors that they carry with them.
REFLECTIONS • Archipelago Series • Nauvo, FINLAND | Fine Art Photography
My whole life is mine,
but whoever says so will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky are mine;
it is still the same, my life.- excerpt from ‘Water Lily’ by Rainer Maria Rilke
“The Archipelago Sea is a part of the Baltic Sea between the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland and the Sea of Åland, within Finnish territorial waters. By some definitions it contains the largest archipelago (island group) in the world by the number of islands.”
