Imaginary Homecoming = Kuvitteellinen kotiinpaluu
94: Pohjoinen, 1999. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Gorgeous photo book with b/w photos. Text in English and Finnish. 91 pp. Minor edge wear. Slightly smudged dust jacket.
Imaginary Homecoming, by the contemporary Finnish photographer Jorma Puranen, is concerned with the relationship between land, people and history Puranen works with old anthropological portraits of the Sámi, drawn from the recesses of photographic archives in Paris and elsewhere. He has photographed archive material, printed it on transparent Perspex sheets and recorded the resulting installations of 'homecoming' in the northern landscape, symbolically returning the pictures to their place of origin in northern Lapland.
The same photograph evokes different stories depending whether it is in an archive or back in the landscape where it was once taken. Its nature and content change en route from Paris to the Norwegian fells of Finnmark, and between the year 1884 and the present day. Imaginary Homecoming is concerned with temporal and spatial distance. It attempts a dialogue between the past and the present; between two landscapes and historical moments, but also between two cultures. This book invites the viewer to engage with issues of memory and history, dispossession and marginalisation. It pays quiet tribute to resilience and cultural resistance.
Elizabeth Edwards contributes an essay to the book, in which she examines the relationship between history and landscape. "Imaginary Homecoming is several things at once: art, documentary and landscape photography. It is also an essay in the historical poetic." Near Fine / Very Good. Item #2290
ISBN: 9517493274
Price: $240.00