UNAgaleria

The Embassy of Finland in Bucharest &
FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange

Wilma Hurskainen - Growth
18 - 30.10.2007
Opening: Thursday, Oct. 18th, 18:00 hrs.

UNAgaleria
10 G-ral Budisteanu
Bucharest 1

Growth 2003-2005

“Growth is a project in which I am reconstructing and re-photographing pictures that my dad took of me and my three little sisters when we were children. I am trying to make the new photograph look as similar as possible to the old one: the place and the composition are the same.
I have always been very attracted by the photograph’s ability to cross time and create this kind of comparisons. There is something sad, almost tragic, about looking at old photographs compared to new ones and seeing how people and things have changed or grown up. After all, it is said that time has been accepted as a common means of measuring life because people are not able nor willing to see the change in themselves. In the pictures it seems as if we were trying to go back to our childhood but unavoidably failed – there is no return in time.
I am also interested in family photographs and the way they are taken, stored and (not so often) looked at. Anyone with any family history can tell that, although the family pictures are supposed to tell a story about a happy, unanimous family, growing up with other people is never simple.
The project is still going on and I would even like to reconstruct the pictures again after 20 years. Unfortunately a part of the growth and life is that it is impossible to predict how things will turn out.” (Wilma Hurskainen)