last year i met harri at photoespañas descubrimientos and it was great to see his prize show in madrid. some of us from the paul graham workshop made are way to the battered show and had a general consensus about the final presentation of the prints and layout; the prints should have been bigger and the grouping was a bit off. i still feel that his work is strong and moving. look at his web page for a full scope on his body of work, from 1998 to now.
about the series:
Battery and street fights are every night activities during the weekends in Finland. People have a strong tendency to get intoxicated whilst partying and, once drunk, people are released from their inhibitions. Aggression turns into physical acts, to direct violence.
There is a social awareness of this topic in Finland, the issue is recognized and is considered to be a severe social problem. However, the discussion has mainly literal dimensions; it appears in news headlines and is discussed in seminars. But there are no images of these events. As this is the case, I wish to give an artistically interpreted visual appearance to this phenomenon. I believe the images introduce a different approach to the discussion by showing the actual outcomes of this violent behaviour. An image tells a story using a different grammar, and, as such, it alters the discussion by adding sensory-based knowledge and, perhaps, emotion to it.
“Battered” is based on social and contemporary documentarism, and the images are related to crime-scene photography (all the way to WeeGee) and police pictures.
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