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AUTOPILOT

Ongoing series since 2024

Autopilot is a collaborative project by photographer Sami Parkkinen and doctoral researcher Frans Autio. The project brings the methods of photography and environmental humanities together. Autopilot is focusing on the infamous objects made of metal and plastics that are overwhelming our streets: the passenger cars, and analyses the cultural, environmental, temporal and aesthetic qualities of them.


Humidity has been condensed on a metal surface and the droplets of water have started to move the dirt on the surface. In Sami Parkkinen's photograph, the iconic star, one of the many symbols that link the car to outer space, is missing from the Mercedes-Benz front badge.


In his essay “New Citroën” (1957), Roland Barthes depicts how the seamless and smooth surface of the contemporary car distracts the spectator from realizing that the object is a machine designed, constructed and assembled by humans. For Barthes, the surface of the Citroën DS signifies a transition toward a new phenomenology of production and objects. It marks a transition from a world where artefacts are constructed by assembling parts together, to one where artefacts hold together “by sole virtue of their wondrous shape”. Barthes writes that DS has descended among us from the skyscraper of Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang.


This “new phenomenology” concerns the relationship between car, technology and science fiction. In the latter, the science and technology coexist in a seamless and perfected manner – or, as Arthur C. Clarke puts it, as “magic”. The most magical futures, envisioned in science fiction, have driven the historical momentum of automobilization. When optimistic futures have been exposed as impossible ones, the omnipresent fear of the future becomes the generator for more visions. Bulletproof windshields are assembled on this magical object, and control of the vehicle is about to be fully automated.


The surface of the magical object is smooth and polished. The surface reflects the image of its surroundings – the petroleumscape – and accumulates the material from it. The virtue of the wondrous shape falls apart. The soot, that consists of the smallest particles of incomplete combustion, covers the surface. The reflection shows also that the car is a planetary machine. This machine has had the power to force societies to tear apart the surface of the planet. Meanwhile, the exhaust gases from this machine travel to the upper atmosphere, where they will lurk future generations.


Text: Frans Autio


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FATHER & SON

Ongoing series since 2012

How does a young child see the world? What is the child’s worldview like?

Photographer Sami Parkkinen (b. 1974) took interest in how his child experiences the sur- rounding world and ended up exploring it though play. Over the years, observing the child’s world developed into a collaborative art project between father and son.

The Father & Son series – started by Parkkinen in 2012 – investigates children’s development of consciousness and the father and son relationship.

Parkkinen photographs shared experiences and life from his child’s viewpoint. Bit by bit, the young mind grasps the world and grows into the person he holds the potential to be. And sharing the child’s experiences creates a portal to one’s own lost childhood memories.

“Children are real Zen-masters and mindfulness gurus. Freedom and creativity, their world is a world of possibilities. I seek as an artist to bring forward a playful and alternative perspective of the world, where the human understands the interdependence between himself and the rest of nature.”

Parkkinen’s photographs and sculptural works that utilize photography explore human growth, the development of perception, our relationship to nature, and people’s ability to change their ways.

Sami Parkkinen (b. 1974) is a Finnish photographer. He employs photography and sculpture to investigate the human consciousness and the need to rebuild society. Since 2009, he has exhibited at a number of museums and galleries, including The National Museum of Finland (2021), Finnish Museum of Photography (2010), The National Portrait Gallery, London (2015), and Circulation(s) – Festival de la Jeune Photographie Européenne, Paris (2016). His works are also held by notable public and private collections.

The touring exhibition is accompanied by the newly published Father & Son book. Work on the series will actively continue for years to come.

Exhibition / Father & Son

Touring exhibition contains 50 framed works (box frame), museum glass) + Installations and video works. The works travel in high quality plywood crates, with safety padding insideand moisture barrier.

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LIMBO

At our summer house, hidden from reality, in this place that is so cosy and so familiar to us, my mother turns to me. “We are happy, aren’t we?” she asks. “Yes, we are,” comes my response, every time. But am I telling the truth? Are we really happy?

Limbo series is an exploration of the way humans perceive happiness. To be in limbo is to find yourself in a liminal state, in a place in-between. We’re in limbo when we’re faced with a choice, grappling with indecision, anxious about our future.

We’re surrounded by bad news. It’s a sign of the times that we’ve learned to find swift so lutions to our problems. Or, to be more accurate, we’ve gured out how and where to hide from them. Pointlessly buying more and more things and endlessly watching the Netflix series might give temporary relief from ourselves, but the a ertaste is hollow.

We know that we need to take action if we are to break away from this self-perpetuating cycle of disaster we have brought on ourselves. The to-do list is as long as it is urgent. We must: take better care of our planet, eradicate war, eliminate hunger, reduce our carbon footprint and, above all, love one another more and better.

With a dash of humour and melancholy, Sami Parkkinen’s photographs offer small but insightful clues to life’s big questions. The desire to work for the common good should be an in-built human characteristic, but what will it take for all of us to start our own personal revolution? How do we extricate ourselves from the limbo?

At least he tried.

Rasmus Vasli
Director and Co-founder of Fotogalleri Vasli Souza

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