Kari Soinio

Photographic artist Kari Soinio’s artistic work concentrates on two themes related to identity: on the sense and representation of landscape and place, and on corporeality, sexuality and male identity. Soinio has experimented extensively on the problematics of perception and representation, both in his signature out of focus landscape work and in his auto-portraiture based work on the male body.

In order to find alternative approaches to the subject, Soinio has combined documentary thinking with challenging the form and structure of photography. His recent projects include The City of Ghosts, a photography series combining architectural photography and street photography. Photographed in New York during several years, The City of Ghosts discusses both the permanence of the city and the constant social changes in it. It also explores the different ways of looking at our own surroundings, how a tourist’s gaze differs from that of a local citizen.

The urban imagery in The City of Ghosts series appears at the same time both familiar and unrecognizable. Presenting only the city’s upper floors in focus and human figures blurred and anonymous the pictures also indicate city’s socio-economical differences and hierarchies. In the beautifully composed photographs a flickering presence of man assimilated with the eternal city emphasizes delicately the fleeting nature of human life. City of Ghosts not only looks into the beauty of architecture and cityscape but into the meanings and natures of a place, of its history and present.

www.karisoinio.com