BOOK:Niko Luoma,For Each Minute 65 Seconds, Hatje Cantz Publications
Niko Luoma is one of the most independent representatives of the Helsinki School. He studied photography in Boston and Helsinki. No one uses the camera like Luoma. He is not interested in capturing the world in front of his lens. He uses light to create his own visual spheres. Using up to a thousand multiple exposures he applies individual elements of color and form to the negative, layer by layer. Meticulous calculations and geometrical skills are the necessary foundation for this. The results are abstract photographs of impressive, colorful intensity and luminosity. The book “For Each Minute, Sixty-Five Seconds” is based on the series “Adaptations”, which reproduces famous works by other artists. Luoma presents a fascinating visual game in which the independent charisma of the photographs acts in concert with its reverence toward Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Vincent van Gogh, or Pablo Picasso. With tongue in cheek referencing, Luoma thus realizes the avant-garde’s desire to liberate photography from reproducing reality, allowing it to become an art.-Efi Michalarou