SONJA SILTALA
THE
MOUNTAIN AND THE SEA
Photographs
from North Norway
PRESS
RELEASE
I’ve
been living in Northern Norway for four years in Vadsø by Varangerfjord. The
monumental and the barren landscapes of Finnmark fascinate, and, at the same
time, are demanding objects for photographing. Wherever there you focus your
eyes and your camera, wonderful scenery surrounds you but only seldom it can be
caught in the photo in all its grandeur. These precious successes are now seen
in my exhibition.
The
themes of horizontality and reflection are strongly present in the photographs.
The sky is a canopy for the sea and for the mountains reposing under its horizon.
The landscape has been divided into pieces; sky, water, snow, ice, stones and
earth each are assertively on their own places. A wanderer and an observer of
the lonely North has created pictures of silence from which the moisture of the
wind, the earth and the sea can be sensed alike with the bursting of the forces
of nature. Suddenly all this can change and then the man is inescapably face to
face with his smallness.
It took
me two years before getting a personal perspective of the ladscapes of Finnmark.
In my pictures the mountain and the
sea are protagonists. These two massive elements have an affair. The
mountain and the sea are lovers who
share an eternal longing for one another. This love
affair is my vantage point to be seen altogether in 17 photographs in colour.
Sonja
Siltala
In
Vadsø,
19th of November 2004.