Esko Männikkö
Kuivaniemi, 1994
Esko Männikkö (1959)
Kuivaniemi, 1994
C-print
49.9 x 54.5 cm
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin / Stockholm / Mexico City
In this picture, photographer Esko Männikkö shows a house half-buried in the snow. A narrow path of footsteps leads to the door ajar, the warm light inside contrasting starkly with the coldness of the scene under a bright full moon. The photograph was made in Kuivaniemi—about 100 kilometers from Pudasjärvi, where the artist was born—in the north of Finland and is part of the series Far North in which the artist photographed lone men that lived in this sparsely populated area. Männikkö captures these rural scenes and places the images in antique frames he finds in flea markets, often installing them in clusters, as if found rather than taken.