"This is not a pipe"
-Henri Magritte
Laakso, H. (2006) "Restless Ways of Worldmaking".
Reality in the Making, 6-7.
The work of artist Ville Lenkkeri is, according to critic Harri Laakso, related to an endless stream of museum-goers passing by an exhibit. Lenkkeri photographs the very type of scene that one would observe in a museum, real life interacting with staged dioramas. These two separate worlds meet unnervingly in Lenkkeri's body of work. Visitors lean against glass cases containing miniatures, and in some images, actually enter the dioramas. Her work is upfront about what is real and what is not. The viewer can easily discern the artificiality of the wax dummies, miniature battlefronts, and taxidermied elephants and lions. Laasko claims that some type of artificiality is always present in this medium,"photography never gives us what it shows". Reality is never truly reflected in a photograph. In a way, these dioramas, like photography itself, are like a memory; the event is represented, but not in an exact, unbiased manner.
Theatricality and a suspension of disbelief are key elements of my own work. I prefer to stage a scene and select gestures and props, rather than just capture an event as it unfolds. The unusual, harsh lighting that I introduce into environments signals a shift from the real world into an enhanced, dramatized tableau. Unlike Ville Lenkkeri, whose work shows a division between what is real and what is false, my photographs are complete works of fiction.
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