kipin's blog

About fragility

I like to think photos as gestures (especially after reading some texts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty). As perceiving something is like touching it and being somehow touched and moved by it, and as gestures and displays of emotion sing that feeling and resonation of that touch in the flesh of toucher aloud and express it, so in the same way I see pictures as one's way to try to give a form for that resonation of the world and things in her/his flesh. It's like world is singing its meanings through photographer giving it an expression. Of course many things set limits to expression, but I feel that taking photos is basically like this.

When I get a chance to see photos taken by other people, it's like meeting these people and the world they experience, the world that resonates in their bodies and flesh somehow, in the gesture-like pictures that are there to give form and communicate what they've been experiencing. Seeing these photos is like opening oneself to these gestures that in one way or another awaken - or not - something in me, resonate in me, communicating something about the world and the experience of the photographer, but always on the limits that my life experience lets it to resonate. Some pictures speak to me straight, in deep tones and without words; some communicate to me with gestures that I don't recognize, they share a world that is strange, sometimes even scary and disturbing, to me. When I let these gestures to become part of me, it's like they make something I already knew even more strongly but maybe from a different point of view true and known to me, or then they give me a chance to learn something new about the world and experience of the photographer - and about me, because it's in my flesh and experience that this new something awakens and makes something not yet known or something already known about myself and my world true to me.

Words, like pictures, are gestures: an expression or form to something that feels itself in my experience and flesh, trying to find an outlet and a way to communicate the experienced in the form of words. Sometimes the words come easily, sometimes it's a struggle to find them, sometimes there's no words, not in the moment at least. Those gestures that resonate somewhere deep inside of me speak to me in languages that are beyond words - only thing I can do is to listen and share, without words. Some gestures take longer time to comphend before finding a right gesture to mirror it back. Silence and staying quiet is meaningful.

Every time I come here I feel grateful for all you wonderful people and photographers sharing your worlds and giving me a chance to learn something about it, and about myself. Forgive me if I don’t always have words, not yet at least, to express what I’m seeing and experiencing when looking at your works - often the pictures that I can’t find words for are the ones that resonate strongest in me.

I've been going through a collection (named Decisive Days) of works of finnish photographer Elina Brotherus from years 1997-2001. Her works fascinate me: introspective, emotional, self-documentary and often sad self-portraits, pictures of open and abandoned places, vast horizons... Deep emotions contrasted with horizons that open spaces to breathe freely. Her style is minimalistic and melancholic which I love because I'm a bit melancholical girl myself!

More information about Elina Brotherus can be found for example here: www.arsfennica.fi/2007/brotherus-en.html

Some of her works can be seen for example here: www.sag.se/foto/elinabrotherus/elina.html

My summer cottage, somewhere abroad in central Europe. It is what Ipernity for me is at the moment. A place where I can travel to from my home in "the other side" in F to spend some time, see the surroundings and chat with people that I've met in the neighbourhood or that have moved here from my home town permanently. It's wonderful to have that kind of place.

Yet, two houses can be a burden too. Having to travel, forgetting the keys and important things into the wrong places... What to take with you when travelling, did I already take this and that to the summer cottage, what do I need there? Things get mixed and I'm getting frustrated. Is it really worth it? Time will tell whether to keep both homes or to stay only in that one place that feels most comfortable.

Time to have a little inventory. Cook books, old photo albums with childhood memories and photos from the travels - those can stay home. At the moment I'm only packing my favourite things, things that are somehow important to me and somehow soothing and relaxing, into my suitcase when heading here into my second home. I'm feeling like on vacation here. A girl without the history and context.

After one week in Ipernity I like it here. This seems to be such an intimate, small, cozy and friendly place and I'd like to consider this as an alternative to Flickr whose policy doesn't get my support these days. Then comes the BUT: language issue. Should I take it as a challenge or as an obstacle? Mostly when I read comments written on someone's pictures, it's like whaaat..? Ok, where's my Duden Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch and french dictionnaire.. :)