The Nordic Guest Studio- Harri Palviranta (FI)

During the months of April and May, we have the pleasure to hand over the Studio to Harri Palviranta, artist/photographer from Finland. 
Harri has been selected by a jury and invited by CFF (centrum för fotografi) as part of the Focus AIR program. 
 
Here are a few words from Harri about his work :
 
"Generally speaking, at the core of my artistic curiosity are issues relating to violence and masculinity, and often in my works I bridge these two themes. Noteworthy is that I understand both of these concepts through their wide definitions. This means that violence and masculinity alike can be observed and studied as both concrete and structural phenomena, and from distant and/or subjective perspectives. Also it should be said that I am an artist photographer, and much of my work falls into practice that can be categorized as documentary. However, in my use the term documentary does not only refer to classical documentaries that are based on ideas of authenticity or indexicality, such as photojournalistic or news photography, my work rather activates critical practices within documentary discourse. Along this line of thought, as a form of expression documentary relates to concepts such as verisimilitude and dramatized or narrated real.
What it comes to my residency in Stockholm, I am intensively working with new material that will be exhibited in a group show in Helsinki Art Museum in June 2013. For this show I am preparing portraits of school shooters from the USA, Germany and Brazil. When the seiries is finished, portraits depict the 12 most fatal school shooters from around the world, starting from Columbine High School killers in 1999. Portraits are constructed from shooting-related news clippings from American, German and Brazilian newspapers and Internet news portals. Each picture consists of 1050 news headlines––each clipping acts like an individual picture, and when reconstructed in the Photoshop these joint images create a singular portrait of a recognizable person.
Alongside with that imagery, I am working with other gun material. Project is called gun.doc. Within this I am photographing men in connection to weapons at homes, at the shooting ranges and at the auctions. I am interested in what men actually do with guns, and what kinds of side actions take place at the premises where guns are used. Also the relationship between a man and a gun is at my photographic focus. Tentatively it seems that the relationship can be warm but a gun can also appear as a fetish or as prosthesis. Often the relationship is very functional. Great concentration takes place when men handle guns. I have been photographing these pictures all over Finland. In Sweden my intention is to visit local shooting ranges and to photograph Swedish shooters in situ.”
Artist website : www.harripalviranta.com