TUIRA – THE BOOK
We live in a place. That place forms us and it shapes us in ways we may not always even recognise. Where one place turns us cold, another makes us more empathetic. Sometimes it is hard to say what in me is of myself and what comes from that place where I have spent so many important years of my life. That place where I entered adulthood, where I’ve felt warmth and loneliness, trust and uncertainty. That place where I’ve both loved and where I’ve had to let go. Years later I return to this place, and everything is familiar and alien all at once. I was here then; I am here now.
Set in the neighborhood of Tuira in Oulu, Finland, this work is a visual narrative that weaves its story with pictures of people and places. Thematically, the work touches on expectations, longing, connections and distances, loneliness, hopes and dreams and the realities of a life lived. All the while, the river runs through it all, endlessly. TUIRA is a collection of things I have seen and things I have felt. The difference between the two is hard to put into words and, in all honesty, I am not sure if there is one. Perhaps it is akin to telling the difference between being and feeling. A place lives in us.
TUIRA is Janne-Pekka Manninen’s first book of photography.
TUIRA: 80 pages, 41 plates with essays. Printed in Helsinki, Nord Print Oy, 2022. Publisher: Janne-Pekka Manninen.