Born 1951 in Pyhäjoki, Finland. Lives in Helsinki, FI.
Jorma Puranen’s series Icy Prospects consists of photos of a beautiful evening sky above dark treetops. It is exquisitely beautiful, like a romantic, melancholy landscape painting from the previous turn of the century. However, our gaze is soon drawn to a strange unevenness in the surface, as though the landscape were reflected in rough ice with frozen bubbles. But what we see is nature mirrored in a glossy black-painted wooden panel. This is not the first time Puranen has set up a filter between the viewer and the image. In another project he photographed details of old portrait paintings, where the strong light from the photo flash shifts the original focus, putting the portrayed person in the shadow of the countless details in the picture, such as the cracks in the surface or the impasto sections. Puranen consistently lets the photographic process and the complexity of the gaze play a crucial part in his painterly photographs, or photographed paintings.
Education
1973–78 University of Art & Design, Helsinki, FI
Selected bibliography
Denis Brudna: “Jorma Puranen – Where compasses all go mad”, Photonews, Zeitung fûr Photographie, Nr 2, 2008
Mark Peschke: “Jorma Puranene – Icy Prospects”, Fotoforum, Fotografie & Präsentation, Nr. 3, 2007
Nikos Papastergiadis: “Flags in the Landscape”, Spatial Aesthetics-Art, Place and the Everyday, Rivers Oram Press, London, Sydney, Chicago, 2005
Elizabeth Edwards: ”Jorma Puranen – Imaginary Homecoming – A Study in Re-engagement”, Raw Histories – Photographs, Anthropology and Museums, Berg, Oxford/New York, 2001
Sylvain Maresca: “Essai de comparaison entre les approaches photographiqe et ethnographique”, La Photographie, un miroir des sciences sociales, L’Harmattan, Paris/Montréal, 1996