Biographie de Jorma Puranen
Jorma Puranen (* 1951), a graduate ofTaiK, the University of Art and Design Helsinki, has become one of Finland's mort celebrated photographers. He is known for his photographe of Nordic landscapes with a conceptual approach. This publication features his latest series, Icy Prospects, in which Puranen painted a board with black, high-gloss acrylic and then took long exposures of the icy landscapes mirrored in this wooden surface.
The results are extremely painterly, highly aesthetic, fragmented impressions of nature in which the board's surface, the brushstroke, and the reflection are inseparably superimposed. In this way, the photographer creates a relationship between the philosophical concept of the "sublime terror" of the forces of nature and his own experience of life in these regions, typifying the north as a projection surface for fantasies and the imagination.
Liz Wells writes and lectures on photographic practices. She is the editor of The Photography Reader (2003) and Photography : A Critical Introduction (2009, 4th edition), and she is coeditor of the journal Photographies. Exhibitions she has curated include Uneasy Spaces and Facing East, Contemporary Landscape Photography from Baltic Areas. Her book, Land Matters : Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity, is due for publication in 2010.
She is Professor in Photographic Culture, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth, and convenes the research group for Land/Water and the Visual Arts.
