Thoughts on home country

Living 19 years in Japan, how often I have been asked “Don’t you miss back home?”. It is one of the standard questions foreigners in Japan get asked, along with “do you like natto?”.

I haven’t been able to answer that question really honestly or deeply. “Sure of course”, has been one of the versions I have offered as an easy answer. It is true, but there is more to it than that.

It takes some time and distance, to truly understand the meaning of a home country. In fact I have lived more longer in a foreign country than in my own home town. It is only now that I understand what I truly felt about living in Finland.

To return back, feeling the atmosphere, smells and climate, it’s such a feeling that only those living permanently abroad can understand.

The smell of the wooden floor of Helsinki airport is what hits home first. That special sweet kind of smell, I am not quite sure what that is. The air even feels different here.

When I lived in Espoo, I used to spend a lot of time alone, just by myself. And I used to hang out in Helsinki Airport a lot. I listened Brian Eno in my iPod and looked at departing planes. And I was reading Banana Yoshimoto or edgy novels of Kenzaburo Oe. And I always dreamed of flying to Japan.

Dreams tend to come true. So not before long I found myself living in Japan permanently.

To me as of now, Finland to me feels as innocent as my dream was about living in Japan.

There was a time that I just felt I had to get away. I hurt my back in the compulsory Finnish Defense Forces training, and was released from service under special circumstances. My father did not take it well, seeing me as a somewhat challenged child.

I just had to go, no question about it. And now it feels like years have stretched longer than I thought.

Loving something or someone, that always is a very private feeling. When there is real love, there can never be one reason to it. We just either love or we don’t. Not being able to explain it is usually sign that the love is real.

Questioning one’s own identity, looking at places I have lived long time ago, is a powerful, purifying thing. It enables us to know ourselves more. I am still on that journey, maybe perhaps now more than ever.

Now at age of 46 I recognize how lucky I am to know these two worlds.
I feel like I have had chance to live two lifetimes.

We humans are not smart enough to understand time. And nostalgy is a mirror into ourselves.

I really recommend to experience living abroad. It is worth it, even if you decide to return.

Tomoko

I had recently a reunion with Tomoko. She came to visit my office in Yokohama before it got dismantled. (I am now officially, a homeless man with no office).

We laughed a lot and had such a good time.

I took her photo first time many years ago. Then her photos were shown in my exhibitions over the years.

I thought they are some of the closest photos to what I think my photography is as it’s best.

In one of my favorite photos she was wearing a fluffy soft muffler, the same that my son used to wear when I took him to kindergarten.

Printing this photo in dark room from the negative, a chill ran down my spine. This got that something in it. Not sure what it is though.

I always said that my photos have a sentimental feel to them, and that sentimentality is a necessity for photographs. I don’t think I knew exactly how right I was; it hits harder since passing of every year.

But then, Tomoko was always so playful and she has a mischievous nature, elevating the photos we took into more than just calm sentiment. She seemed to challenge my idea of what I think the moment should be – laughing and goofing around in unexpected moment.

Photographer is always alone. There is something about this journey that needs to be experienced alone, otherwise it loses it’s power.

We can never view the world through eyes of others, we got to experience it alone.

I would like to think these photos are quite close to what I think my photography is.

But it could also be, that this is nothing but a beginning.

I am making a movie

Recently I heard there is a special kind of forest fire that can survive winter, kindling fire, they call it. The fire dims down into slow burning embers that slowly burn under snow, transcending seasons.

This is what this film has been, slowly burning away inside my body, almost extinguished. The script has gone through several actual rewrites and even more imagined ones. Some of the ideas have emerged only to be released again back to the lake.

But now finally I felt the real flame starting to emerge, bringing a new image that now feels complete, a story that has beginning and end, but also enough breathing room to let it develop further, and to let actors and actresses to bring their own spirit to the work, which I think is extremely important.

Pseudo documentaries, those in the likes of Suwa Nobuhiro’s 2Dyuo or Kawase Naomi’s films, or District 9 with the “interviews” of the African people are brilliant. Documentaries are afterall search of “realism”, in a way that CG director would look for photorealism in the VFX work.

Ryoko, the character in this film is innocent woman like women in Lars von Triers films, too honest for her own good but also the kind of person I wish more would exist, but she also is obsessed in reality. For her it is romantic to sleep in hard wood of kitchen when she feels hurt. Painkillers or booze would not work for her.

I think Heart Sutra makes some great movie dialogue and subject matter, death is indeed the ultimate kind of reality. But this is all more playing with philosophical constructs and fun with poetry than Buddhism like in Kim Ki-Duk films.

The story From the Water’s Edge that I wrote several years ago also features a woman called Ryoko and it also tells a story of a loss. There are some parallels to the story and few of the scenes are also included, those who have read the story will recognize a certain scene involving burning wind turbines on sea.

This year I have been afraid that the embers under the ice are getting extinguished, disappearing forever. But now I feel alive again.

This piece is dedicated to the new people I have met recently in my life.
Thank you for saving the flame in me.

Surroundings

I think it is attractive idea to use camera to simply document my surroundings with no particular agenda. No pressure of building a coherent series of pictures to put up in exhibition wall nor need to worry about getting the picture absolutely perfect. And no need to worry if my pictures would be worthy of someone’s time or attention.

Because if the photos I leave behind me are a kind of evidence where my eyeballs were pointing at, then I think that is also a reflection who I am. I wouldn’t take a photo of something I am not interested in.

I tend to be really interested in people I meet.

Decade of Pictures and Living Now

Looking back at the past decade of my pictures, I see a kind of pattern emerging. Some of the years I took almost no pictures at all, and those years resulted in the least of good pictures. And then year like 2017, when I took most photos I had more gems than all years combined. In addition to that, my best photos seem to be film photos and in addition, it seems to me that having film in my camera makes me to take more pictures.

So it would seem that there is like this momentum, pictures that turn out strong will attract more of such and so on. And getting that one great shot will make us go out and take more pictures. It’s like exponential growth.

It could be that the only way to get better is to take more photos but then equally there is also right time for photos. I don’t mean literally in terms of noon sun light being harsh. I mean spiritually. Person rejecting to be photographed one day might be a willing subject another time, so patience is required and there is just this magical time when nobody minds to be photographer, that’s the way how great photographers blend in.

Ultimately for me the reason to return to photography is the need to return to live in present. I have been obsessed with nostalgia, but it’s wrong to keep thinking same thing over and over again. When I take photos I am back in the present.

I would like to take a photo of the person thinking it’s the last chance to meet that person, kind of like in Japanese phrase “ichigo ichie”. That really helps to bring back thoughts to the present.

I am grateful for the wonderful people I have met, some of who I will never meet again. Even though I miss them, I am just grateful for the wonderful stories they shared and the moment we could share.

Father

I did not make it to my father’s funeral. Finnish airlines happened to go to strike, just that day. But I made it the next day with Japan Airlines.

His grave was still new from the ceremony with fresh flowers and spruce twigs laid on top of a kind of cover that was placed on top of the grave. Father was lying silently in frozen ground.

It seemed to add to the strangeness of my first close encounter with death, seeing my father’s coffin ready to be buried in middle of snow like that. We humans can’t imagine how it would feel not to be.

This time my visit was shorter than I expected. But before I departed, I woke up early morning and took a walk in the crisp Finland winter. The night sky opened up magnificent above me. Some of the stars whose tiny light reached me probably didn’t exist anymore.

It was time for me to go.

Hakone

Some time ago I and my son visited Hakone. It was oddly peaceful and quiet place.
Hakone Hotel was especially good place to stay, really nice place just by the lake.

I like the black and white photos with Leica M Monochrom.

Money is nothing but a tiny little thing.
The way you treat others is everything.

to Kyoto

I went to Kyoto some time ago