Red Sundays

What does resistance look like? Can it be a community working voluntarily in communion in order to counter the prevailing individualism of the wider society? Can it be a mere house, defined and built as a human right, only to live in, not to sell or profit off of? Can it be a land, expropriated by a group of people in order to survive?

In  this photo essay I shed some light on a community whose life is build around a constant resistance. It is not symbolized by black masks or slogan-yelling on the streets. It is on the contrary ingrained in the everyday life of the community. People’s life  is intertwined with and inseperable from the ideal of a revolution, both in the sense of politics and power relations but also in the sense of subjectivity; thoughts, feelings and identity on the personal level. 

I have photographed the material environment of the town which embodies the resistance on multiple levels. It represents the material result of a fierce battle with authorities. It is furthermore the material product of a revolutionary mindset and agency, a symbol of a people recreating in a radical way their own environment at the same time as they build for themselves a new habitus, purpose and reality. Lastly, it is imbued with the subjectivity of the people inhabiting it, it is both filled with symbols people use to talk about themselves, and it is also an intimate part of their life-world and their sense of belonging. As Heidegger puts it: „Being takes the form of dwelling.“ 

Northern Cities

The Northern cities project was organiced from the Northern Photographic Centre in Oulu, Finland

The approach to this project was to find how I could get the most normal situations to look interesting.  I wanted to express the true image of the inhabitants and the city as a home to the people who make the city as their home. In this process I decided to take pictures of people outside their houses.  The method I used was simply to walk door to door and ask people to participate in this project, and the result is quite pleasurable.  I think I got the original concept pretty well, you as a viewer can see very well the identity and mentality of the northern cities. 

From the sidewalk and the windowshelfs you can read a lot about the living standard and the things people in the northern cities want / don't to have around them.