Ritva Kovalainen (1959, Finland)
Ritva Kovalainen’s photographs are inspired by nature, stillness and light, and by poetry. She has an enormous passion for photography and experiences the world as full of visual moments. ”I enjoy observing the world around me, wherever I go. As a photographer nothing is really boring, even the boring can be inspiring.”
She became interested in photography at an early age. Her parents had an old 6×7 cm camera and she started to take pictures when she was 14 years old. She found a source of inspiration in photographer Edward Curtis and in old books on Native Americans. In Helsinki she met photographer Pentti Sammallahti. His pictures and approach to art and life itself helped her plan her future. She started studying photography at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki (now Aalto University) in 1980, and was overjoyed to get Sammallahti as her tutor. The relationship between people and nature has been, and remains, the key focus of her work, and she uses photography and poetry as channels of expression.
Before Ritva began to study, she had worked in fish processing factories in Northern Norway, both in Havøysund and Båtsfjord. She has also been in Oslo and Bergen, but never in the North-western part. She looks forward to experiencing the spectacular landscape and stimulating encounters and photographs. And, not least to experiencing Nordic Light, which her husband Pekka Turunen (guest in 2011) has told her so much about.
Sanni Seppo (1960, Finland)
Sanni Seppo has more of a documentary focus. She is interested in society and portrays the lives of individuals in different social situations.
Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo work together, and will visit the festival together. Since 1992 the two photographers have focused on trees and forest – they both share a great interest in the forest and care about its future. Considering that 77% of vacant land in Finland consists of forest, it is not difficult to understand their connection. The forest is Finland’s most important natural resource, and there are about 400,000 forest owners there. This means that every fifth Finn belongs to a forest-owning family.
Ritva and Sanni explore the spiritual and cultural connections to forest and the mythology around it, as well as peoples’ everyday experience, in their project Tree people. The want it to create debate about the significance of trees for previous generations. They have revealed a lost history and put the spotlight on the resurgence of old nature-based spirituality. The exhibition has toured a number of art museums in Finland and abroad. Together they have published a number of books and received several prizes. They have also made a short film, End of the Rainbow, about how the forestry industry has affected both the landscape and people’s lives. The increased efficiency of this industry during the last 60 years has had a high impact and social cost in Finland, resulting in considerable ecological problems and human suffering.
In their last project together, The Golden Forest, Ritva and Sanni take us on a journey into remote tracts of virgin forest that few of us have seen before. Very little of this type of natural forest now remains. In Finland virgin forest is given little value, according to Ritva, and this exhibition questions to what degree we have a right to wipe out species in nature. They contrast the Finnish attitude to that found in Shintoism in Japan, which considers trees as sacred and inviolable. The contrast of this to the attitudes of many western lands is striking.
