Over the summer one of the photographers I interned for told me about the artist Arno Minkkinen, a Finland born photographer. I was immediately drawn in by his work because it was really like nothing I had seen before. I really admire the simplicity of the concept and the compositions, and am able to dive into the beauty of each individual picture. Its impressive that a person who started a series in 1970 can continue working on basically the same body of work for over 30 years and continue to be innovative and interesting. I love when I look at a photo and do not immediately know what exactly is going on in it. I often find myself flipping through photos very quickly, so its great to come across images that force you to spend time with them.
My work has definite ties to Minkkinen's work both conceptually and ascetically. Lately I've been experimenting with abstraction in my own work and I have been playing with figure ground ambiguity. Like my shop windows Minkkinen's work uses reflections, depth of field, and abstraction. Formal qualities are a large part of the shop windows for me so his work is a great place to start my research. I love to shoot landscape but to often I feel disconnected from my shots. In a few projects I have done I included myself in the frame, in the same way Minkkinen has in his projects. While Minkkinen tries to blend himself in, I have found that I usually make myself stand out. I'm not entirely sure why I do this but having seen his work has definitely caused me to consider my own choices and reevaluate some of the decisions I routinely make.
