Making this photograph required physical strength on the part of the circus artist Marta as well as maneuvering an industrial pulley capable of lifting 10 tons metric into place.
Two years since my previous blog post? And two years since the previous immersive experience from Flow Productions? Coincidence? Think not!
Well, let’s face it, we all had a crazy couple of years. Luckily, I have had great assignments in the meantime but I have been seriously neglecting my blogging. A huge chunk of my time was devoted to making my first book of photography, TUIRA, but more on that later.
So! VARIKKO (‘depot’ in Finnish) is another multi-disciplinary immersive performance by Flow, incorporating dance, contemporary circus, text, actors, visual artists, sound design—the whole nine yards. Many of the crew are familiar from previous installations, like HYLKY, but there are fresh new faces involved as well. More members to Flow Family!
The piece is set in the old Oulu City Depot (Oulun kaupunginvarikko), which is a great space that was built in late ‘50’s, early ‘60’s and has been used to store and maintain snowploughs and all kinds of infrastructure vehicles. The space is huge, with two big halls downstairs and a string of offices and other rooms upstairs. VARIKKO is taking advantage of all these spaces as the performance sprawls in and out of the rooms and halls. Here’s the trailer, so you get an idea:
It’s pretty heavy stuff, which is par for the course as far as Flow is concerned. Where HYLKY had an overarching theme of shipwreck as an actual thing and metaphor, VARIKKO is thematically broader and takes on many different things. What you get as an audience member is very much up to you and your unique experience in an immersive world, but maybe this sentence from VARIKKO gives a hint to the goings-on: “I have the sensation of falling.”
One of the main pieces of equipment that gets used to a very dramatic effect is this old industrial lift or pulley type whatchacallit. It’s an incredible machine, especially in the hands of circus artists Marta Alstadsæter and Kim-Jomi Fischer and Jared and Katariina Van Earle.
When we started discussing the poster for VARIKKO, we wanted to have the pulley and the hook contraption featured in it. We also wanted something very graphic, a very simple yet eye-catching poster that you would spot a mile away.
The team had started creating and rehearsing the piece in the Spring/Summer of 2021, so we already had a good idea in the Spring of 2022 as to what was going to happen with the lift. (We shot the poster image early June, 2022.) Also we were in this crazy industrial space with huge windows, astonishingly high ceilings, and just this fantastic grit everywhere. So what do we do? We bring in a black backdrop and eliminate the environment. Simple, just like in a studio!
Well, we still have that lift in the photo so it’s not like we went to the studio and cranked it out in 20 minutes. Oh, no.
Flow Family in rehearsal back in 2021, director Pirjo Yli-Maunula on the left. This is part of the VARIKKO performance space. Notice giant wall of windows to the right.
Here are Kim (on the controller) and Kata testing the lift in 2021. This is the area of the room we ended up setting up shop for the poster photography.
So the space is amazing! But problematic in terms of lighting. The huge bank of windows on the right and the trajectory of the sun in June means that on a sunny day the place will light up just around 12 noon to 1 PM from said windows. I only had 600 KWs flash power available at the most, which would make it difficult to overpower ambient light during direct sunlight. Especially since, as I was figuring this out with pen and paper, we still needed some distance between the flashes and our subjects.
Ah, it’s hard not to think this was made by a five-year old. But it wasn’t.
So, the fact that we would bring in a 2,73 meters wide backdrop that we can take up to, oh I don’t know, 3,5 - 4 meters at best maybe, gave me a starting point from which to suss out the plan. On the top you see me worrying about the windows, putting in gobos or maybe a folding backdrop to block it out. Then I started sketching out the lighting. I wanted to light the subjects brightly to have them pop out against the black backdrop. Rim lights would be necessary to still draw the outlines against the black. I wanted to light the hook/pulley separately and have that pop, too, because it’s rusty and cool and I wanted to have that stand out with some hard light.
I also toyed with the idea of setting up the backdrop diagonally, which would maybe blot out the sun and still give me a straight shot at the hook. (You can drive it around the space, but the round bit doesn’t rotate.) But the apparent width of the backdrop would be a problem (ie. not enough width) and it would have been a hassle, so no go.
On the right page I say, “Bring everything”. Just because we would have a window of an hour maybe with the talent. They are professional circus artists, they have had a long rehearsal day, we don’t want to wear them out and definitely not risk an injury. We would also have only 2-3 hours to set up because we would be in their rehearsal space. So, “bring everything” because I don’t want to be driving back to the studio in the middle of it to get something I forgot. Like a reflector and a power cable. Man. (Shout out to my main man and super great assistant for this shoot, Erick!)
So this is the lighting setup. Four lights in all. Boomed softbox for the talent (and spill on hook), gridded flash on camera left lighting the hook/pulley specifically, two gridded rim lights behind the subject (one behind black gobo, other gets blocked by the foldable backdrop.)
The modifier I wanted dictated my choice of key light which was a Godox AD300 Pro. Only 300 KWs of power (think impending sunlight), but fairly close and I could get a nice and tight beam of light from its gridded softbox.
Here’s another shot from camera position. The backdrop got super dirty because the space is super dirty, but in the end we would be photographing them suspended and not show the ground.
Light test, color target and a happy assistant. Hey it was all good!
Bring in the talent! Now, we wanted to have a single person on the hook even though we had toyed with the idea of multiple people. But which one? The circus artists all took turns on the hook, coming up with different body positions and emotions, and my job was capturing everything. We photographed tethered to a laptop so we could take a look at the computer to see what we were getting, which was helpful to the artists as well as me. Oh, and a tripod is essential in a shoot like this.
Here are Jared (top left), Kim, Marta and Kata. The key light from the top lights them brightly but gives some shape to them as well, meaning that there are still shadows on them, wrinkles on shirts, faces when they’re looking down etc. Edge lights are doing their job from camera right and left, as you can see on the outlines of the subjects. Looking back on this, I could have lit their black pants a little more as they now only have a faint edge light on them. The yellow-and-black circle of the pulley is lit with the gridded flash and it really pops.
I felt that we could have chosen any one of these for the poster, but in the end we went with Marta. Just the right amount of strength and vulnerability in the photograph.
And there you have it! Graphic design by Tomi Hurskainen.
I’ve also been making plenty of photographs during the rehearsal for VARIKKO as well as the actual performance photos and press photos. Plenty of stuff to see on my Instagram and I will post some later here on my website.
There is such talent involved in these productions, and in addition to the artists featured here, I have to mention performers Henna Kaikula, Anssi Laiho, Nikke Launonen, Merja Pietilä, Susanna Pukkila and Milla Virtanen. As well as Light design: Jukka Huitila, Set design: Heidi Kesti, Costume design: Sylvi Siltavirta and Pirkko Hansen-Haug, Sound design: Anssi Laiho.
Plenty of names you will recognize from previous Flow collaborations and some new ones. Flow Family is growing and that can only be a good thing. I count myself as incredibly fortunate to have been involved in so many of these productions. For now, we are enjoying VARIKKO until it ends (Sep 30, 2022), never to be seen again, as is the way of site-specific immersive performances. But we will have the memories, and the photographs.