Aino Kannisto's insular women

"I make constructed pictures. I build fictional scenes which I record with the camera. I act out the parts of the individuals in my pictures. However, my pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. The person in the picture is a fictional narrator in the same way as there are narrators in literature. My pictures are fantasies, I represent an atmosphere or a mood through fictional persons. Fantasy is a means to speak about emotions.

Making art is for me a reaction to being in the world. I am engaged with my artistic work as I am always a perceiving and reacting human being. I see pictures in my mind, the things I have dealt with come into my dreams and still moments. I cannot stop working as I cannot stop thinking or existing in the world.

I am influenced by the surrounding world, literature, cinema and photographs as well as by images more difficult to locate, such as memories, daydreams and nightmares. The individual pictures do not have names as I do not want to define my pictures by naming.

In photography I have always been fascinated by the physical side of the work, my own bodily presence in the pictures and a careful building of the scenery before the moment of exposure.

Making pictures is for me a way to deal with human emotions. It is also a source of immense creative energy and pleasure – a way to give meaning to life by sharing some part of the world which otherwise remains private."

Aino Kannisto

Her images could be stills from movie clips. Most of them are untitled, they seem to be self-explanatory, a screen capture of the bigger picture. Aino's photographs intend to be the tip of the iceberg. To me, they are clear and clean, but mostly they feel like shots of loneliness. It could be these characters are alone, it could be their inner lives wouldn't be as exposed as they they seem to be if they had company. Who are we when we're alone, are we truer then?

Kannisto's work is currently showing at the Berardo Museum, Lisboa. Worth a visit. Red Kitchen, below, drew me like honey in a jar. May be because, just like with Rohmer, I could be every single one of them.


Red Kitchen (2004)


Walnuts (2006)

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Woman with Glasses (2005)


Launderette (1999)

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Two Mirrors (2006)