Almost there

“The highway bridges were crowded with cars. Everyone had pulled up to take pictures of the vista, the view, the landscape — a landscape that was familiar, a landscape that led nowhere, a landscape that was miles of salt water, and on which the horizon lay in a thin line.

We drove slowly. I thought about the women by the desert lake. It was winter and the towns were quiet.”

The exhibition Almost there explores landscape photography and the materiality of the photographic imprint. The exhibition is an ensemble of multi-materialities that extend towards the space between sculpture and photography.
At the core of the exhibition is the notion of decentralizing the perspective of landscape photography, a tradition that was developed on the West Coast of the USA, where these images were taken. The works steer the gaze to the edge of the landscape, to the areas and beings that often remain blurry and inconspicuous within traditional landscape photography. In the working process dreaming and craftsmanship have been instrumental in giving the works their final form.

Emilia Pennanen is a visual artist living in Helsinki. The exhibition on display at V1 Gallery is part of her master’s thesis at the Aalto University School of Art and Design.