KRISTA LEPPANEN
Cluster Exhibitor | Photography & Print Fair 2022
Maraisin seinä
Untitled.
Krista Leppanen is a self-taught photographer living and working in Finland. She is mostly drawn to black and white photography as it communicates material forms and emotional levels in a rich and expressive way. As she is especially interested in capturing a seemingly meaningless moment or object, she finds the serene yet dramatic tones elevate everyday modesty into the spotlight of well deserved recognition.
Her work is not limited to black and white photos. Color photos are always an option as not all works in black and white. Monochromatic experiments are something she wishes to master one day.
Cluster Photography and Print 2022 Fair was her first exhibition.
Untitled | 2016
Untitled | 2016
On photography
Photography has the power of elevating the smallest measure of a moment to a grand spectacle. A photograph reveals the relevance of the transient moment. Transient becomes eternal, momentary becomes timeless. Something invisible, insignificant and to be overlooked with a shrug of shoulder comes to a halt, inviting our gaze. A photo can capture a moment as it is, and at the same time unintentionaly manipulate us since we do not have access to the next moment.
Krista takes pictures of what is interesting to her. In a sense, what she sees and preserves might not be true, even though the moment or object itself is absolutely, purely and deeply true. But it comes with endless interpretations. Stopping, capturing and preserving a seemingly meaningless moment intrigues her. After all, life consists of the continuum of just those moments.
Red herring | 2019
Rare bird | 2019
Untitled | 2016
Untitled | 2016
Untitled | 2019
On recurring themes
That which does not pose or thirst for attention is of interest to Krista. Roughness of the environment, structure and surface. Rhythm and repetition. Architectural details. Turned backs of people who do not pursue nor realize their magnetism.
As yet her camera is more of a sense organ than a technical device to her. The random beauty, rhythm and perfection of street life surface when it’s not sought after. It happens when everything slows down and accelerates, seconds throb entreatingly and the universe moves in slow motion. The particles of whatever there is just there and then collide and give birth to a moment. The moment is perfect with all its imperfections and then it’s gone.
She explains life by absorbing into incompleteness, detachment, unfinishedness, desolation and abandonment. Cast-off. Vanishing. Loneliness, solitude and isolation, and their many layers. Modest and exiguous. Seclusion, breakage of lines once designed and made clean. Former beauty. Hasbeen. The sighing of time in buildings, their surfaces and shadows. Dilapidated, crumbling ghosts and the pride with which the landscape carries them. It all invokes her. And yet, she finds her work to carry an element of hope and humour
Untitled | 2016
On identity
We all get dismantled. Buildings, humans. No matter how carefully built and maintained. Demolition of identity is sometimes a necessity. You might not get to be asked whether it is convenient for you. You inhale the dust of destruction and cough it out. Value is not always in permanence, it is sometimes in the ability to deconstruct something that has nothing but the past. The ability to detach from something that is only the beginning of a sentence “I used to”. Its value lies in the foundation it provides for the future.
Identity is a necessity, a source of empowerment at it’s best, but also something we are obsessed about. We build it, polish it and show-case parts of it. We try to place curated bits into the erratic spotlight of attention of others. At the same time we try to protect its fragility from the wrong kind of attention. Identities can be imitated, duplicated or stolen. They can be downplayed, belittled or neglected. One future project Krista has set her mind to has to do with photography as a healing and empowering method in identity building.
Untitled | 2016