Family Album

Family Album is an ongoing photo collage project in which I deal with family history and heritage. I play with different roles and role models produced by my immediate family as well as our culture and society at large. I deconstruct and reconstruct the images, build new narratives and create my own imaginary family album. The work is my interpretation and subjective vision of how the past and the present are constantly intertwined – my psychological reality.

The starting point and the main source in the project is my personal family archive, photographs taken mainly by my Dad. I combine family snapshots with photo booth, passport and mobile phone images, childhood drawings, digital drawing and text. I build collages by using different digital tools. I recycle same images, details and forms in various combinations, scales and contexts. Different signs, shapes and symbols are used in order to create space for associations and new meanings.

I use recycling and repetition as a way to express the infinite formation and transformation of identity. The history and psychology of the past generations are being forwarded and repeated in us, visibly and invisibly. At the same time we are constantly connected to and influenced by our surrounding culture. Identity is constantly in motion.

The evolution of sexual identity is at the forefront of the work. I use Marilyn Monroe as a symbol: parts of her, imitations of her, references to her appear frequently in the images. For me, she serves as a symbol for many aspects: sexuality and sexual attraction, constructed roles and produced sexual identity, vulnerability, pain and sorrow, conflict between inner and outer self.

Thematically the work continues my interest in the concept – and image – of (western) family. What lies behind the facade? Family Album is an attempt to reach something invisible and unconscious: unspoken family history, erased memories, emotional heritage. It is a reflection of how ambiguous one’s own family and history can feel.

I use photographs because they have a certain connection to reality. But I want to shake and disturb that connection, let my mind and imagination blend in the images. I work very intuitively, following my inner impulses. I’m interested in the subjectivity and unreliability of seeing and narrating, how the mind effects on what we see, how we see and how we interpret what we see.

I see personal family photographs as a kind of collective archive. They often share common motifs and aesthetics and therefore private images can feel familiar. They can evoke one’s personal emotional memories. In family photographs the deeply personal can turn into something universal.

Family Album started as a series of zines, published in 2018–2019. I’m currently working on three new ones. They will be finished and published in 2023. Submitted photos are from the next issue 1/2023.

Family Album has been shown as a solo exhibition at the Northern Photographic Centre in Oulu, Finland in 2020. Some images have and will be been seen at the Month of Photography in Denver US (2021 & 2023).