Elina Brotherus

Suites françaises 1 (1999)

Kaila: Your Suites françaises 1 landscape pictures are to me more ambiguous and also more symbolic than your earlier works.

Brotherus: They are more geometric, more abstract even, than the preceding works. In addition, they are also surprisingly colourful. In my early work the palette is very narrow: because the subject matter was heavy, I wanted the pictures to be formally simple – whereas Suites françaises 1 contains pink, orange, violet, cyan... When making it I began to take pleasure in colours. As regards the symbolicness of the series, the bridge is a recurring theme, so it could of course be interpreted symbolically. Nevertheless, I was more interested in it visually. Kaila: Bridges are generally depicted from the side along with both banks and whatever is spanned by the bridge, i.e. the water or something else. Your bridge pictures are quite different. In them the viewer is as though on the bridge, left to imagine where it leads. Brotherus: Yes, my bridges are arcs where you can't see to the other side. It’s the same as with a curved hillside, or the horizon, behind which we cannot see because the earth is curved. I’m interested in these kinds of views, of 'edges of the world'. Such pictures refer to a space that is beyond the horizon; they are linked with the unknown, with the dream that there is something wonderful over the edge. Kaila: Many of the Suites françaises 1 pictures show abandoned and deserted places. Why? Brotherus: I wanted to simplify, so I photographed empty, ‘breathing-space’ views, where there is a long route for the gaze. The world contains so much mess and visual noise – I have tried to mark off the interesting and in some way significant fragments. Furthermore, I wanted to continue the landscape work started in Finland with Landscapes and escapes (1998-1999). However, being in this new country, I couldn’t find a place for myself in those unfamiliar landscapes. This is why all the empty views. (Finally in Suites françaises 2, the post-it stickers made it possible for me to integrate my own figure in the landscape.)

(Adapted from The Enchantment of Reality, Elina Brotherus in discussion with Jan Kaila, 31.8.2001, in Decisive Days. valokuvia-photographies-photographs 1997-2001, Kustannus Pohjoinen 2002.)