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ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT
EPF 2010 Finalist
Jukka Onnela
Of Obsessions
Night or nighttime is the period of time when the sun is below the horizon. The opposite of night is day. The disappearance of sunlight, the primary energy source for life on Earth, has dramatic impacts on the morphology, physiology and behavior of almost every organism. Some animals sleep during the night, while other nocturnal animals including moths and crickets are active during this time.
“My goal with these photographs? Even saying that sentence is like listening to a junkie bumming money from his mother… …the shit that my brother poured out of his mouth when he was an addict was unbelievable. I remember this one Christmas Eve when he called to my mother that he needed three thousand euros, or otherwise “some men” would kill him. I can’t remember if my mother gave him any money, although usually she did give some”.
-Excerpt from a recorded conversation, Helsinki, 2007
“Sometimes I have this insect like feeling. It usually comes after a long manic phase .”
-K. In a bar 2009
Mania is generally characterized by a distinct period of an elevated, expansive, or irritable mood state. People experience an increase in energy and a decreased need for sleep. They may indulge in substance abuse, particularly alcohol or other depressants, cocaine or other stimulants.Their behavior may become aggressive.
“I love my mother but I think it’s not an oedipal thing”.
-K. 2009
“When the depression really hits everything turns into yellow and grey. I don’t know why, but the colours remind me of the year 1984. My grandfather died that year. “
-Excerpt from J’s monologue. 2007
“Your moral, economical and religious values have created this enormous vacuum around you. All your ideas and acts are stained by these twisted values, or more likely by the lack of them.”
-M. 2009
I document my surroundings, the people who inhabit it and the situations, that I somehow consider to be significant, by using recorded conversations, texts and photographs.
Bio
Jukka Onnela (1977) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. He is one of the founding members of an European photography collective, Collective Smoke. His work could be described as personal documentary.
Related links
well that was a visual FEAST!!!
loved how it was shot and put together. at first the mixture of b & w and colour threw me a little, but by then end i had embraced it.
personally didn’t appreciate the more ‘sexual’ images, but this didn’t subtract from my overall positiveness towards this piece.
Human. self harm, mania, lost souls, junk, tragedy, no hope. Some people just now how to self destruct.
One of the things I like about this essay is that it forced me to look at all of those things, if you like I wasnt looking at the ‘photographs’, i forgot about photography and I think that great photographs make you forget about photography and think about the truth in the message.
Jukka, I never feel I need to question who you are or why you do this work. It all seems right there and very clear without my needing to understand the specifics entirely. There is never any pretension or condescension. I always feel like, on the one hand, this is where you ‘live’ and, on the other, like it’s all completely fascinating and unbelievable to you.
Looking at your work, I always want to go work harder.
This strikes me as highly skilled, emotionally evocative photography that is presented very effectively. The story though has been told many times before. Does this work do anything to add to the genre? I don’t know the answer to that but am curious what the more experienced viewers round here think? It’s certainly strong as a stand alone.
And I’m especially curious about the audio. It’s mentioned prominently in the artist statement but I don’t hear any. Is it my system or is it not included?
ugly, raw, visceral, jarring and brilliant.
loving the energy here.
“Think of being curled up and floating in the darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world? The Asian Taoists called it “10,000 Things”. And if the darkness just got darker and then you were dead, what would you care? How would you even know the difference? “–Jesus’Son, Denis Johnson
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be”-Lao Tzu
Little brother:
what the family, beginning with Mom, has seen and endured and what left for me to write that i havent already shared with you 10,000 times before…..
wild strawberries and gulps of silent light….
hugs from the 3 of us here….
b
Painful yet oh so real. Nightmares made manifest through the glare of a flash. Brilliant.
Patricia
Jukka, I don’t know if that is your mom in the first photo, but it breaks my heart, as hers must be.
My other reaction to these photograhs is one of anger. Mostly because of drug issues within my own family, and the trashy, violent, hedonistic sub-culture that seems pervasive with these days.
This is ugly, powerful stuff. As with “A kind of mistake”, I don’t know enough about you to know wether I should congratulate you, or to tell you to get your shit in a pile and grow up.
One of the best story tellers around!
The shoe shine boy put on his hustling smile and looked up into the sailors dead, cold, undersea eyes.
Eyes without a trace of warmth or lust or hate or any feeling the boy had ever experienced in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, impersonal and predatory.
The sailor leaned forward and put a finger on the boys inner arm at the elbow.
He spoke in his dead, junky whisper. “With veins like that, kid, I’d have me a time.”
He laughed, black insect laughter that seemed to serve some obscure function of orientation likes a bats squeak. The sailor laughed three times.
He stopped laughing and hung there motionless listening down into himself. He had picked up the silent frequency of junk.
His face smoothed out like yellow wax over the high cheekbones. He waited half a cigarette. The sailor knew how to wait. But his eyes burned in a hideous dry hunger.
He turned his face of controlled emergency in a slow half pivot to case the man who had just come in.
W.B 1959
I was going to write that the essay could you a little coherence; but of course that’s the point, isn’t it? It documents the incoherent, the chaos. I like it. Photograph 16 is jarring and I don’t understand why it is here and its significance. Thanks and congratulations Jukka.
Nice quote John.
Mike.
Jukka, this is tough stuff. Raw and true. Congratulations!
Surely leaves me with a few question marks, but that’s how it should be.
And John: Yeah, W.H.B. fits in just perfect!
Jukka: move on.
You have journied into darkness and have taken us there with you. Extremely well done.
As MW notes, when I look at it, I feel that I have seen it all before in other acclaimed essays, but that does not negate the power of it.
What an ugly world. Jukka, why? Every so often it’s a good
idea to go somewhere we cannot fathom. I appreciate the
reminder Jukka.
Hi Jukka..
How to escape and get bound by wire all at the same time.
As usual, images like these speak a thousand words.
I don’t know enough about you – or who is in the photographs whose ‘portraits’ you are sharing – to know whether I should congratulate you, or to tell you to get your shit in a pile and grow up… Gordon partly said it for me
Yes, this is highly skilled, emotionally evocative photography that is presented very effectively. But what emotion, or emotions does it evoke? What is effective? It evokes sensation like a punch to the gut. Disgust and loathing. It is judgmental. It is a judgement and brooks no alternative. Like a Calvinist preacher screaming fire and brimstone for those who err. John Gladdy’s criticism made all that quite obvious, at least in my mind.
I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of still photography that many of you possess, which is why I ask where this work fits into the junkie genre. I have hazy memories of others I’ve seen. In that context, this one strikes me as being very well done as individual photographs. But the story, I fear, is not a story; it is an onslaught. As coercion it may be effective. As art, I fear it’s limited.
When we consider the junkie masterpieces that have been produced in other arts — Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries, Lou Reed’s Heroin or Gus Van Zant’s Drugstore Cowboy, we can discern two important differences. Those works do not judge the junkie. They judge the straight world. And more importantly, those works acknowledge that it’s not all horror show. People take drugs, particularly opiates, because it makes them feel good. In the case of heroin, it makes them feel very, very good. So I think there’s a bit of dishonesty in these pieces that show only the horrific car crash at the end of the road without acknowledging the beautiful scenery that exists along the way. They want to constrict our knowledge, not expand it. The people in Jukka’s photos are probably experiencing ecstasy, but the photographs don’t really show that. Of course the idea that junkies experience ecstasy that the straight world can’t even dream of clouds the message. But clouding the message with deeper truths is what art’s all about.
In general, I am not into this kind of dark perverted photography, more so if it’s just obviously a half baked and visually incoherent as this essay appears to me… although, speaking about this kind of sleazy stuff, I really enjoy Antoine D’Agata’s work a great deal… so I guess, I set the bar too high… that’s why I find quite rarely truly enjoyable photography in general… except the work of very few talents, well known photojournalists, and… old family photo albums, which are being burned and thrown away by some young people of our generation in my country… and I have just started collecting them… I don’t know why, I just do… Sorry for off topic…
your pictures carry a strong message about a world which is as strange as it can get to me.
However, your way to approach the subjects is so close and intimate, that even if I wanted to turn away, I can’t. Your pictures are not trivial and they carry a message – everybody may interprete this message differently, but it is there.
Now, I would like to see pictures you made with less strong subjects. Pictures telling me other stories, maybe even less close. But not necessary less disturbing.
Congratulations anyway!
You know what? I think mw is right. It is a judgmental piece. It did not strike me so at first, so strong are the images from a world that I have occasionally danced on the periphery of but have never allowed myself to be sucked into, that I was just taken with the impact.
But yes, there had to enticement and pleasure along the way and the only images that even hint of that are the transsexual masturbating and the disturbing series of small images in #10. So, to better understand how people wound up like this, perhaps you need to use your remarkable talent to round it out with some images that explain the motivation that lead your subjects to the places they wind up in in your photos.
We all want to be happy, we all want to experience pleasure and, one way or another, these desires must be what led your subjects to the places where you photographed them.
The danger, I would think, is that if you stay so deeply buried in this world as to enable you to so intimately document it is that you will wind up as your subjects. The critics will say his career was brilliant but flamed out early and came to a tragic end.
Perhaps not. I hope not. Maybe you are an exceptionally strong-willed man. But the possibility strikes me.
“We all want to be happy, we all want to experience pleasure and, one way or another, these desires must be what led your subjects to the places where you photographed them.”…..oh I think you may just be looking at the wrong end of the rainbow there bill.
if i may….
i think, while drug use, is a certainly a part of this essay, as well as Jukka’s essay “a kind of error’, it is NOT the essence of this work, nor even the aperture through which one sees or rather hears the story contained….to do so (reading it as an essay on drug use and that environment) is to limit profoundly the scope and the direction of this work…there are only a few pics that did specifically with drug use and i would suggest that viewers, if interested, re-imagine what ‘of obsessions’ may entail…there are non-drug users in this story…instead, it deals with a negiotation, the negotiation of living and living through the act of photographing….and failure of that as well….obsession that is not about a drug obsession, not at all…but other obsessions, obsessions we all have…..the obsession to photograph, the obsession to document, the obsession of memory and memory’s loss, the obsession with reconciling behavior with remedy, the obsession with past with the present, with family with ‘inappropriate’ families…the obsession with attempting to make sense of the world around, etc etc etc….
i’m writing from a position of priviledge because Jukka is a friend of mine and i know his work intimately and i know his life story/family story intimately, or rather, as ‘intimately’ is may be possible between ‘strangers’…..
i do not want to write anything long, or interpretive (as i did as editor-at-large when ‘kind of error’ was published, and i think it’s important that, like all work, ‘of obsessions’ remain open to the same kind of ambiguity and ambivalence, the same kind of clarity and confusion, that marks each attempt at ‘documenting’ the world and the stories inside us and out….
i think if one re-considers the first and final image of this essay, it becomes a doorway through which readers may see or hear a story that is, in fact, not at all about drugs, but about that slippery negotiation between living and leaving and the impossible, yes impossible, attempt to tell that story through images, of others and of self….
cheers
bob
when i write “’m writing from a position of privilege”…i DO NOT mean my sense is right…not at all ;)), i meant that i know Jukka, we’ve spent time talking about work, his work, my work, the work of life and so i dont want to say too much because it was my privilege have chats and it’s not my place, therefore, to write an interpretation, as jukka has shared with me his life and ideas….in no way to i mean i’m privileged by knowledge ;))….sorry about the poorly constructed thought…
cheers
bob
1) Picture of pretty woman.
2) Close up of man. Bloodshot eyes. Presumably stoned out of his gourd. Photoshop crinkles added.
3) Picture montage. Shooting up. Baby. Out of focus images.
4) Little child. Looking up at camera.
5) Stoned woman. Nearly out of frame.
6) Blurry picture of man.
7) Two pictures. Money on bed sheet. Naked woman exposing pussy. Holding tits. Whore?
8) Man with cigarette. Torn pants. Appears to have pissed himself.
9) Four pictures in a vertical layout. Various men peeing in urinals. Appear unaware their privacy was invaded.
10) 36 thumbnails of bald guy. Playing with his fat. Child and woman. Smacking himself.
11) Blurry pictures of person shooting up.
12) Bleary-eyed man with gash over eye. Lots of blood.
13) Transsexual holding erect cock.
14) Woman with cock in mouth, jizz on face. More photoshop cracks and wrinkles.
15) Apparently stoned man, drooling. Snotting?
16) Old man in wheel chair… Captain’s cap.
17) Bleary-eyed man. Stoned.
18) Two pictures. Blood on paper towel. Man blowing smoke. Crack smoke?
19) Close up of old man’s face. Eyebrow, sharpest element.
20) Mugshot of man. Dried blood on picture.
Hopping back in to say my interest has been ignited – it’s as if I have found random photographs of people on the street. The beginning of a mystery with gaps so huge between the photographs that the mind can fill them in with any story you should care to choose. (Reminds me of what Hemingway wrote in his intro to Green Hills of Africa to the reader: feel free to add in a love story if you feel the need!
Who is that in the first image? Why did you chose it and why put it first? And the guy in the wheelchair – what has he got to do with it? And how did that guy get his eyebrow cut? And what are you doing in all those situations? I can see why Panos likes this! But I feel it is too superficial at the moment – it just looks like an attempt to shock. I think you need to go much more deeply into it and get closer emotionally to the people. I feel a disconnect, a feeling of you feeling ‘turned off’, cold, unattached and am left wondering what really you are doing here.
I think this could end up to be pretty amazing. I’d like a soundtrack – sounds like you already have the recordings.
Wishing you the best of luck…
By the way, do you have permission from your subjects??
I did not enjoy this at all. The only subjects that grabbed my attention and interest were the two spread eagle shots mainly because I was trying to figure out if it was the same person pre / post op. If it hadn’t been for the keys being dangled in front of my face in the form of graphic nudity… i would have lost complete interest.
It just seemed to me like a very desperate attempt at being deep and interesting and succeeded at neither. I could go the rest of my life without seeing anymore blurry black and white images of needles and junkies. I think the image quality was poor too.
Then again, this is the kind of stuff that gets published all over the internet recently. So maybe I’m the idiot for not finding it clever or insightful.
On one hand its another glimpse of a kind-of-life, nothing that hasn’t been done before, but all such motivations become original as this fine art portrays so amicably.
Described earlier as a visual feast – not a bad description at all. We can all feed from the trough.
Voyeuristic from the perspective of individuals who may never inhabit those spaces. Thank you kindly.
Not that it particularly needs to be, but could the technicalities of the photography be better – at least in some? Some may affirmatively suggest that it is appropriate to the subject matter. It is what it is and whether taken with a camera phone or on medium format it is as relevant/irrelevant as the moment is. It’s always a balance yet, I think, always worthy of a check.
Eitherways, cool stuff and well done. Sincere kudos for being recognised in this fine haunt of the internet world. Good luck into the future.
“When the depression really hits everything turns into yellow and grey. I don’t know why, but the colours remind me of the year 1984. My grandfather died that year. “ – Excerpt from J’s monologue. 2007 — this rings a chord – my understanding here is yellow and grey are the colours of the aftermath of death, the decaying corpse in the aftermath of the ultimate moment in its existence – that which it inevitably becomes. Grandfather, perhaps an aged man, in death – wearing the shroud of yellow and grey. Not grandfather really but death. Perhaps. Hard to know.
Best.
Jukka; Congratulations on being one of the finalists. To me; this essay is like being hit between the eyes with the back of a spade. I’ve never lived this type of lifestyle, but have known a few that have.
This is sorta like Richard Billingham’s “Ray’s a Laugh” crossed with “Trainspotting”. It has the same “gloves-off, kick you in the nuts” rawness and darkness of Billingham’s book.
I get a visceral, stomach twisting feeling from this essay, which I suppose is the intent. If that was the intent then it worked on me. A precarious ride along the knife edge of life and death; and imparts the feeling that these people’s live could easily go either way.
John – both ends of the rainbow have the same origin.
Bill. maybe….
I am building a perfect vision
with imperfect eyes
searching for the end of a rainbow
in puddles and mirrors
I am doomed to happines
and my shadows mock my crippled visions
with little glimpses of the truth,
from the safety of illusion.
I must be mad to be so sane
and why cant everyone else see what is wrong here?
Some work requires you to just give yourself over to it, to just feel it, to be there.
For me this isn’t something where I need background, where I need to see other aspects of their lives or how they reached this point or even where they’re going, I don’t want a lesson.
It’s like swimming in the sea….when you’re in it you’re not thinking about how you got there or how you’re getting home you’re just there, experiencing it, and that’s enough.
VICKY…
yes, exactly…thank you
Yea, I don’t want lessons either. That’s my problem with the story aspect of this work. It strikes me as a lesson, more like a sermon. For example, what’s it supposed to mean when you sandwich a picture of an innocent, vulnerable child between serial images of people mainlining and a junkie zoning out? I’m not opposed to emotional manipulation, and this that works for evoking an emotional reaction, but we’ve seen that montage before. And I think the unrelenting closeness of the shots may help convey that shouting from the pulpit feeling as well.
But perhaps as Bob suggests, I’m just not getting the subtleties? Wouldn’t be the first time, but judging from the other comments, I’m not alone in thinking that the moral of the story is that drugs are bad.
It’s a banquet of impulses, and a world that is often not survived. If even Jukka’s big toe is firmly in that world, as it appears, he is already in far over his head. I can’t help but believe that the photographer is more important than the photograph and when I say “move on,” Jukka, I mean do your version of “Tree of Smoke.” I’m sure it’s in you.
I’m always torn on commenting on this style of essay with this type of subject. So I won’t say much more than congratulations Jukka for being posted and making it as one of the finals. And thank God this isn’t my world.
LEE GUTHRIE…
for sure you would not want this as your world…however, i would like to see your world…can you do it ? yes, i know you have photographed from your window..but that was a romanticized version of your life i am sure..can you cut to the core? would be interesting , very interesting….this is of course what you struggled with in new york…and surely this is easier for Jukka than it would be for you because his “cover” is completely gone…non existent…however, i still think this is in you…
MW..
i cannot see the “pulpit” from which Jukka is preaching…i am very interested however in that this is what you see…i do see a very self absorbed person of course…maybe that is what you mean…
Yes, this work as presented here in all its superb mastery, is a lesson. It is a very different experience than swimming in the sea, because you do look at it, you do ponder, you do think and you do wonder.
….and some may remember, and even mourn the loss of this, maybe.
I can’t really think of something positive here. Mostly I have negative impressions about this work. Unfortunately i feel the atmosphere is not proper to say it loud here – If I understand right what i read (that this essay leaves author uncovered), than criticizing essay could hurt him.
Second reason is that i have an impression, that some of You know more about the author and his work than this essay really says.
So i’ll just keep it short and will share some neutral thoughts that came to my mind:
Isn’t personal documentary photographic genre where wedding photos and family albums are? Including family albums that store random and bad moments instead of regular nice memories?
Is the author more important than his personal documentary? If he is, than how can You really appreciate or evaluate his work if You don’t know him personally?
What happens If You hang family album in the gallery, and is it same thing as showing it to the people You know?
What do You call an art, in which the viewer is actual artist?
And last but not least: Was GG Allin highly skilled and emotionally evocative master of art, because of his performances?
Best Regards.
although, speaking about this kind of sleazy stuff, I really enjoy Antoine D’Agata’s work a great deal…
————————————————————————————————–
sleazy??????????????????????????????????????????????
the ability to mirror oneself, uncovered, naked…sleazy?
Jukka cannot be compared to D’Agata or anyone…A syringe in a photo should not allow anyone for oversimplifications/comparisons of that way…
ok, now my turn to oversimplify:
Jukka is Jukka,
and nobody is like Jukka and Jukka is like no one else…
same as Antoine..noone is like Antoine…
heroin, a syringe, drugs ,underground does not categorize artists…
just because we see a syringe in the photo, just because this isnt our lifestyle doesnt mean that this is a bad work or a great work…
Jukkas work is great because his work is GREAT..
part of Jukka’s greatness is his HONESTY..he does not do it to cheaply stir ones emotions..
not at all..those are cheap old fashioned pj/newspaper techniques to sell…
but Jukka DOES NOT uses those tricks..
he dont need them..
coz Jukka is not trying to sell..
Jukka is NOT salesman..
Jukka is not a sell out either…
Jukka is Real…therefore his photos are real…
Heroin does not produce great photos necessarily…
Neither does Haiti or wars..
You have to have that “something extra” to be Nachtwey and not just another zoriah,
u have to have that something “more” to be Jukka and not just another pj shooting junkies…
I DO NOT KNOW JUKKA..in person..
i never met him although i would like to..
Im not defending a “friend” here or any of that bull…
I see a major storyteller in Jukka’s work…
a guy i can learn from…
thank u Jukka…
To me: Jukka’s essay is the EPF winner….
By the way, do you have permission from your subjects??
——————————————————–
Jenny u know how much i love u, therefore no sarcasm here at all,
but,
but, its so obvious he got permission by his “subjects”…he is super close
and most subjects literally stare at the camera…willing to be photographed…
on the other side the most important thing is that Jukka asked permission from himself first,
and thats exactly why i think that Jukka is BRAVE…really honest and brave coz the hardest thing to ask and achieve is self permission..its his life he is exposing, not his subject’s …
(i always thought im good at this, but Jukka is simply better..end of story)
big hug
Panos.. thats a really good point (being brave) in that I don’t think there are many of us, or in the past, who were brave enough to come out and bare all. Its very easy to go out and document somebody else’s vulnerabilities, but to put ourselves up there for moral judgement is a different matter. This may be the purist form of documentary we can make, if the motivation is true.
I find it works better from back to front.
F RANCIS B ACON
“Jukka cannot be compared to D’Agata or anyone”
You bet that’s right. They are the opposite despite touching similar subjects.
D’Agata does his work with extreme respect to photography (and the viewer), he influences imagination alot (not only for highly sensitive viewer), he’s operating with figures of speech that You can almost compare to literature. And what’s most important his photos don’t try to convince me so desperately that they are real (which wouldn’t be possible anyway). That’s the least important issue.
“Jukka is Real…therefore his photos are real…”
Panos, You write alot of things i disagree with. Most of it You shouldn’t even be writing without knowing them for sure, and You cannot know most of them for sure without knowing the author.
Without knowing the author noone’s able to tell if it’s an attempt to confess honestly, or just random drunk lomography. It’s just not possible, period. Of course You may believe or feel, but You don’t know that.
That’s the reason I question the purpose of showing this kind of work outside closed circle of friends and relatives (family album). And that’s why it’s so tricky to rely on what You, or even the author believe is real – because without this “reality”, there’s nothing left.
“really honest and brave coz the hardest thing to ask and achieve is self permission..its his life he is exposing, not his subject’s”
How can You tell that he’s exposing his life? He’s got full control of what he shows. It’s not possible to show any reality in that case, because You can’t even seriously try to be objective about Yourself. He shows what he decides to. I think it just looks to You like “exposing himself”, because these photos look like something You wouldn’t want to show.
Besides that is highly disputable if exposing publicly author’s (and his relatives, close friend’s) intimacy is a brave and valuable act. Why so many photographers with any photojournalistic experience consider all those stories about dying grandfathers as a cheap trick?
Here i sense and feel emotional exhibitionism, and that doesn’t mean any effort. It means an attempt to draw attention.
“but to put ourselves up there for moral judgement is a different matter”
Only thing i evaluate here is the essay, how meaningful and convincing it is, and what do I think about it. I don’t judge the author, because i don’t know him, and i don’t even see any reason to judge him.
Actually i hope that none of You think that You can know, or judge the author only by this essay. :]
Best regards to the author. I hope that my point of view could be helpful in some way, and I really hope that You don’t feel like I’m taking opportunity to comment on this too far.
David, my reasoning goes something like this:
It appears to me that Jukka has taken a very judgmental, moral position on what he photographs; that it is ugly, that it is bad. He could have shot it in an idealized way, made it, or at least some aspects of it, appear beautiful. He could have taken a neutral approach. But he chose to make it sensational. He chose to make it ugly. Not just in composition, but in post production as well. And I see the inclusion of the children as very harsh moral commentary. How else is one supposed to read the juxtaposition of the baby, the mainlining, the vulnerable child on the floor, and the zoned out junkie? The photographer/editor’s eye here is sympathetic — if not quite outraged, hardly the cold dead eye of Burroughs’ sailor.
And the closeness of the shots, the in-your-face nature, the sensationalism of the approach strikes me as the visual equivalent of typing in all caps. It’s like shouting. Look at this! See how ugly it is! See how wrong! If I were to guess the title, “Obsession” would have never occurred to me. More likely something like “Degradation.”
So putting those two observations together, I see someone shouting moral condemnation and equate that, or at least see similarities, with a fundamentalist preacher hollering from the pulpit.
Of course I realize that there are other ways of reading the piece and do not believe that what I have described is the only way. And when I say it could have done it this way or that, I’m not saying it should have been. And I certainly don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with being against, or aghast at, junkies throwing their lives away and damaging the lives of their families. It’s just old news. The shock wore off a long time ago. IMO, there are more interesting ways to tell the story. I think back at all the junkie stories I’ve been exposed to and realize that although it seems I’ve seen a lot of these very direct, very emotional, scare stories, I don’t remember any of them distinctly. The ones I remember — Burroughs, Carroll, Reed, Van Sant, et. al., were significantly more subtle
Anyway, sorry to harp on that aspect of the piece, but David asked. There’s certainly much to admire in the work and I generally agree with the positive comments others have made. But maybe this is a case where the sequential method of storytelling doesn’t work? Perhaps just about any one photo tells a better story than the whole?
Yes, it’s interesting how we all read this so differently.
I’m not getting any feeling of this essay being judgemental or giving a lesson, just that he’s very honestly showing us this world, the pictures are ugly because it IS ugly.
I don’t feel there’s any side to Jukka, just a chap trying to record and maybe make sense of what’s around him, I like him, he’s trying and he’s doing it his way and doing it really well.
I like photography that makes me feel something, that wakes me up, and this does.
Pawel Glogowski,
Thanks for your truly rational and precise judgment… agree with everything you have said. I find this forum very often misses a fresh point of view like yours… too many nice, but way over sensitive people here who seems are ready to eat any junk and attempt to cook that is given to them… Cheers
Heh, Anthony, thank goodness you’re here to put us nice, overly sensitive people straight :)