Statement by Juha Nenonen

A photograph is always polymorphic and vague. The appearance of a photograph might look simple, easy, commonplace, mundane and banal but in the end it is everything but that. The counterbalance of clear resemblance and likeness seems to be photography’s strange ability to distort, corrupt and pervert the motifs it is depicting. A photograph reveals and conceals at the same time – and it might do so evenly.

The style of my working is usually a plain photographic style: I try to emphasize the transparency in photography. I make highly photographic tableau images, which represent and show their subjects clearly, but where the incidents point out to several directions at the same time. My artistic oeuvre could be described as diverse and polyphonic. Use of different subjects causes heterogeneity. I’m interested in creating contradictions, tension and confusion. But my goal is not to create disorder or to be unclear. Rather I try to find interesting elements in polyphony.

My works are usually open and they have certain narrative elements that may come across almost romantic, but in every work there is always another, more conceptual, level. My photographs have certain elements of conceptual art but they are not conceptual photography. Yet, thinking about the media has always been a part of my working process. Though, it has never been the main motif of my work.