Multiple plate, photo-polymer intaglio prints
Lohiniva is a town of about a hundred people in the Polar Arctic Circle. Deep snow makes sounds muffled - if not absent - from the landscape, and it can be difficult for the people to break this silence. The portraits are trying to convey the remoteness, and the sense of community, where people are dependent on each other for either practical reasons, such as a broken well or a leaking roof, or for social wellbeing and sanity during the long, dark, winter.
I wanted to capture the magical atmosphere of this place and tell the rich stories of the people and show their beauty. The big brute reindeer farmers showed me their soft and fragile side when sitting for me. They were not able to hold eye-contact, their jokes became gentle and caring, and some of them told me about their personal troubles in life. The only female portrait in the series is that of a 9-year old girl who was fierce, concentrated, and curious and kept eye-contact the whole time.
The poems featured in the zine are written by Marco Zaccaria Di Fraia and brings the naturalistic
portraits into a mythical setting, transforming the people into characters while still being true to their person and their stories. It thus becomes a modern tale, a hybrid of documentary and folklore.
