Anni Leppälä

The connections between the images are essential for my work. How they affect each other and which kind of relations they create between each other. I try to trace this emerging "third image" between two or several images - the various combinations of images compose different interpretations which are like uncovering of new thoughts.

My work does not consist of separate series, but the recent images expand the already existing entity of works. This starting point also conducts the situation of photographing, where I am drawn towards the search of recognition and equivalence. I am looking for elements of the visible reality which could be recognised as conveyors of a certain experience or atmosphere and which could also create connections with the already existing images. Since I have noticed that the image transforms its subjects I am aiming at understanding and "reading" this language of transformation. Months or years later, when the image has parted from its initial context, it can appear as an image, as itself. 

"Tracing can imply a narrative action of tracking down, investigating and unearthing 
something. Here the narrative dimension does not work that way. These photographs 
are not actions, properly speaking. They are, at best, fragile apparitions, undecided 
between action and passion. Here trace is a noun that must be heard as a verb, and 
then again as a noun. By way of alternation of attraction and repulsion the images 
nevertheless manage to take us to their own threshold, to the mouth of the burrow, or 
to the edge of an alluringly dark forest." 

	-Harri Laakso´s article The Very Last Image, Foam Magazine #25 Winter 2010   

For me photographs are like fixed points in the process of change and alteration, they give a chance of observing and allow the viewer to step closer. One can gather trust and confidence in recognising them but simultaneously photographs have another kind of nature; a side turning towards the invisible and the unidentified. What finally becomes recognized can be something “outside” of the image, something out of sight – something imperceptible. In this momentary experience something is revealed which is not “that-has-been” but rather something that exists and is present here and now.