In Between the Ends of a Rainbow
Johannes Romppanen, Aki-Pekka and Astrid Sinikoski, Juuso Westerlund
Latvian Museum of Photography, 2021, November
Yeltsin Center, Yekaterinburg, 2020, November
Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow, 2019, November
There are sudden moments of spell we treasure in our memories – moments of dust playing in the sunlight, safe hand fondling our hair, while we fake we’re still asleep, indescribable certainty of the whole world being at it’s right place for a short moment, carefree -yet secure sense of loving and being loved back, unconditionally. These lived memories cannot be recalled by force, but once becoming a parent we receive a momentary access back to the chest aching bliss of childhood. Facing our own vulnerability, knowing we cannot protect nor prevent our children from sorrow and worries, we keep loving them with bursting hearts.
Here three fathers are photographing (with) their children, focusing on what is near, shared and what really matters –all that fits and takes place between the ends of a rainbow.
Johannes Romppanen opens up his family life with warrior princess Lilja, a princess who does not speak, a princess who does not walk, a princess who will be needing assistance for the rest of her life. But foremost the princess is Lilja, a girl and a daughter who will be turning six soon, a girl who can make choices with her sight and experience her surroundings strongly through her hearing, a sister who can play with her brothers, a daughter who is cherished for what she is and can do, instead of for what she isn’t and can’t do.
New Ghosts is a photographic diary by Aki-Pekka and Astrid Sinikoski, father and daughter who work together not only to photograph and pass on the everyday, but to discuss the thoughts, fears and dreams of both adult- and childhood. Universal questions and feelings reshape as New Ghosts, previously unnamed fears and threads, which are no longer enemies, but servants ready to support and make us feel stronger.
Juuso Westerlund photographs his two sons growing, as if the images in Heartbeats, where poems he didn’t know how to write. Poems of boyhood, longing, innocence, vulnerability and mortality. The work seeks to address questions that are fundamental to human experience, the answers to which we might have lost touch with as we’ve become older –What does childhood mean and how does it feel?
Organized by The Finnish Embassy, Moscow.