Nothing is true, everything is possible

Nothing is true, everything is possible (2021-) explores the relationship between the real and the imagined within documentary photography through the story of a lion seen in Eastern Finland in 1992.

In 1992, Finnish media was overrun with stories of a lion lurking in the forests of Ruokolahti. Thirty years on, no one knows whether the legend is real. Nothing is true, everything is possible is a journey into the traces of the lion, playfully intertwining archival material and graphic printing methods to fill the blanks throughout the story. The performative scavenger hunt for a fabled lion becomes an obsession where everything morphs into a potential clue. The municipality itself grows into a character, a suspect in the story. Reality and fiction lie parallel to each other, not to deceive, but to encourage a redefinition of a view of the world where only one truth or reality exists.

Questioning the authenticity of photographic imagery in the contemporary climate is at the centrefold of my practice. News stories that have not been confirmed as true or false have worked as a starting point for my visual investigations. I’m interested in humankind’s innate curiosity towards mythologies and the disposition to accept tales as truth, which may well be the foundation for fake news to gain ground within contemporary culture.

The pieces are weaved together through three layers of time – archival material from the early 1900s, news footage from Ruokolahti in 1992 and contemporary images from the past few years, re-visiting the area myself. Interwoven events create connections between the past and the present, creating a new narrative while questioning original meanings and contexts of the images. Beyond individual narratives, I examine the constructs behind the widespread notions of truth and its deciding authorities. I am fascinated by the relationship between the real and the imagined in a world saturated by fake news, and what all this may mean for the future of photography.