Issue #1 Winter 2002
4 Photographs
by Arno Rafael Minkkinen
(click on image to enlarge)
Artist's Statement
For thirty years now I have been engaged with a single idea: to use my own body as a means of expressing our relationship to nature.
Just as rocks and trees have not changed much over time, so our bodies are not much different today than they were five hundred years ago; hands, fingers, toes, all those basic things are essentially the same. This is one of the reasons why I aim for timelessness in my work. It also begins to explain some of the limitations I have set up for myself as a photographer.
I learned about limitations as a graduate student in an art history class at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was a quote from Georges Braque that nailed
it: "Out of limitations, new forms emerge." Six words, but they are so concise and precise. To know what it is that we want to do, Braque was saying, we had to know what it was we did not want to do, what it was we would never allow ourselves to do. If you happen to be an artist yourself, try it. What are your limitations? What will you never allow yourself to do?
For me, the matter became quite simple: I had to do it with a single exposure, otherwise it would look fabricated (back then), or digital (now). For me, it had to be one click, or in the case of a longer exposure, one
whir of the shutter. There's enough mystery and chance in the process of photography to begin with, why take it away by giving yourself endless options.
I am a documentary photographer. I treat the medium the same way a street shooter does. What happens in front of the camera is exactly what is happening in reality. But I also look at the world through the mind, as I wrote for Minolta cameras many years ago: "What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera." Instead of giving expression to the world's outer appearances and perplexities, I have wished to explore the inner world of our fears, hopes, and desires in an attempt to make communion with the one world we inhabit.
©2002 Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Arno Rafael Minkkinen was born in Helsinki, Finland, and is Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has devoted his life's work to unmanipulated self-portraits in the landscape since 1971. His work has been exhibited throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. His books include Frostbite, Waterline, and his latest, Body Land. More of his photographs will soon be available at <www.arnorafaelminkkinen.org>.