En La Orilla Opuesta

En La Orilla Opuesta (On the Opposite Shore) is a poetic exploration of my dual cultural heritage, shaped by my upbringing between Finland and Argentina. The project reflects a search for wholeness—an attempt to reconcile place, family history, and memory

Built from my photographs, childhood recollections, family photographs taken by my grandfather in the 1950s and 1960s Argentina, and historical documents like passports and transatlantic letters, the work weaves together fragments of reality into a dreamlike, emotionally driven composition.

At its core, the project reflects my childhood visits to my father’s homeland—an idyllic, almost mythical experience of reconnecting with family and self. Revisiting magical realism while developing this project, I recognized parallels between its origins and my childhood experiences. Alejo Carpentier describes magical realism as born from the collision of European and indigenous worldviews—an encounter with an unfamiliar reality.

Likewise, my childhood stays in Argentina felt extraordinary compared to my quiet life in eastern Finland. Inspired by magical realism, I embraced a freer, more expressive editing style, prioritizing emotion over strict reality. By blending images from different locations, I reinforced a sense of fantasy and timelessness.

Through this project, I came to understand the illusions within my own cultural identity and my longing for a place that exists only in memory and imagination. Ultimately, identities are the stories we choose to believe in—and those stories shape our reality.