Rooted in classical documentary and narrative photography, Jari Silomäki has developed a unique way of storytelling, constantly finding new ways of exploring the realms of fact and fiction, documentation and imagination. In his numerous long-term projects, he joins photography with written narrative elements, creating a gateway between the familiar and the unknown. Investigating everyday life from several angles, he manages to connect private thoughts with the outside world, merging the local and the global. The diary-like sequences of his series My Weather Diary serve as telling interludes in apersonal narrative, often implying what came before and what might follow. Silomäki gives the viewer both a possibility of sharing his private experiences in the landscape where he was on the day of the experience and a possibility of a collective experience by registering world-political events that the viewer remembers, too. We may remember where we were, our mood when we heard about these events, or notice that what is memorable to another person is quite insignificant to us, or realize that we are reading a piece of news as though for the first time. The personal notes also offer something to identify with – feelings of loss, expectation, joy and longing.

Jari Silomäki (*1975 in Parkano, Finland) He lives and works in Helsinki. Silomäki graduated from the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2007. He has held solo exhibitions in institutions such as The Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki, 2017) and Gallery TaiK Persons (now Persons Projects, Berlin, 2017/18) while group exhibitions include venues like Convento da Trindade (Lisbon, 2018) or Kiasma (Helsinki, 2016) among others. He is a member of The Helsinki School focusing on contemporary Finnish, conceptual, and social photography.