re: Reading the newspaper (from the series After 100 Years in Portugal)
Jacob I find your reading of the picture very interesting, but I think I would contest your translation of Tuomas' statement. In it he says "For me, photography is never about capturing the perfect shot, but exactly the opposite. It’s about dealing with the vulgar reality of actual experience. Unsuccessful moments will bring a whole range of emotions with them. And usually the perfect shot would kill the moment because it’s just too vulnerable to be captured that way." First I would say that literal frames and the perfect shot are not necessarily synonymous. Second, I think allowing imperfections into your work doesn't exclude the possibility of finding symmetry in a chaotic world. And even though there is a certain parallelism between the lines of the window and those of her computer she is, in fact, imperfectly framed by the window, as the right side is not shown. There is then, to be quite strict in the reading, a certain open-endedness to the right side of the frame. An opening, if you will, where the chaotic and the symmetrical are in tension. Though, without question, I agree that this is the most seemingly composed and perhaps sedated picture in the series I think it is interesting in its very inclusion. As if the artist says: "all of these are part of the same reality!"; "where chaos exists in the world so does compuser!"