Exhibitions
Ram Ram Ludia
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki, Finland · 2009
VIEW WORK
“Ram Ram is my life’s work, the story of a village whose life has become part of my own.”
KUTCH
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki / Karjaa, Finland · 1996 / 1998
VIEW WORK
“I asked an Indian friend about villages where I might go to photograph. He mentioned one in the border zone with Pakistan: no English, no toilets, not even clean water.
“That’s exactly where I want to go!” I replied.”
Ilkka - the boy calendar
PHOTO EXHIBITION & CALENDAR
Helsinki, Finland · 1999
VIEW WORK
“Of all my friends, Ilkka is by far the most magnificent: fiercely intelligent, courageous, passionate and big-hearted.
With the splendid self-confidence of a mature man, he asked me to photograph him for a pin-up calendar. With the manic energy of a psychiatrist, we shot the whole thing in one day, on film of course.“
Women
PHOTO EXHIBITION
Helsinki, Finland and Maputo, Mozambique · 2005
VIEW WORK
“Hardly anyone would have agreed to photograph an entire exhibition and a book in just four weeks, travelling across a country whose infrastructure lay in ruins and taking time to meet the women along the way.
I said yes. It became one of the finest journeys of my life, with shooting days stretching from sunrise until well past midnight.”
Bombay Circus
PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIO
Helsinki · 1996
VIEW WORK
“This small series would never have existed if an airport official in Bombay hadn’t stolen the films I had shot over several months.
All that remained from the journey were a few poorly developed strips of negatives. In desperation, I began making photographs from what was left: circus clowns, acrobats and snake children.”
Mirror 17+5
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki, Finland · 1996
VIEW WORK
“I had forgotten that I had promised an exhibition. When the gallery called, I was devastated by grief and had no idea what I could show.
I decided to photograph everyone who walked into my studio. The photographs were brutally awful, and I understood something essential: every photograph I make is also a self-portrait.”
Anno Illusionis
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki and Sammatti, Finland · 1993
VIEW WORK
“I made this long before Photoshop, so the photographs are unmanipulated. To create the image of walking on water, we rowed around the archipelago for a week looking for the right place. On the final morning, we found the perfect rock just beneath the waterline.
I told my husband to stand on it wrapped in a sheet. We got the photograph, and almost forgot to bring my husband back from the rock.”
On The Streets of Ahmedabad
SLIDESHOW / PHOTO SERIES
On Social Media · 2020
VIEW WORK
“For decades, the chaos of India’s streets has surged before my camera. I tried to make sense of it by using a studio backdrop to separate people from their surroundings.
But something interesting was always happening just beyond the backdrop. So I widened the frame again.”