Jorma Puranen

Photographer Jorma Puranen has become known for his conceptual images of northern landscapes and readdressing historical portraits. In his work he explores the themes of history, culture, identity and memory, creating dialogue between the past and the present.

Puranen often uses archive material as his point of departure, but instead of concentrating on the objects themselves, he studies the reflections, shadows, brushstrokes and cracks on their surfaces; the layers of uncertainty in between the object and the viewer.  

Recently Puranen has photographed old glass negatives, making visible the retouching made on their surfaces. The images that used to stand for good life and glamour are now marked by ruined, dream-like quality and melancholy.

For his previous series entitled Icy Prospects, Puranen developed a method of painting a wooden board with black, glossy paint and photographing reflections of landscapes on the surface of the board, the result being a series of photographs with extremely painterly appearance.

Jorma Puranen is FCINY’s artist-in-residence for the month of September. During his time in New York Puranen will dedicate himself to studying his family’s history and stories of emigration and fate,  laying the foundations for his future work.