When the Blackbirds Return

Kun mustarastaat palaavat

Photography / 2019 – 2020 / pigment prints / edition of 5

It all began when I found a photograph from my late grandmother’s album. The photo, taken in 1920, depicted a house in a small American town, where my grandmother was born to a Finnish immigrant family. This little town became only a dormant memory in my family passed down in brief anecdotes and not much else. I, however, started to nurture an obsession to the house – I treasured it as a nostalgic, second-hand memory, a mystery heavy with hidden meanings waiting to unfold. Now, 100 years after the photo was taken, I took it upon myself to find the house again and explore the ethereal mystique surrounding it.   

 The series documents my journey in the town of Salem, where I find flourishing abandoned cemeteries, blank facades only made of absence, and coincidentally, the very same blackbirds that appeared as messengers of death in a story told by my grandmother. And finally, my journey ends at the house where everything started a century before. 

The series is based on imaginary as well as actual places located in Salem, although I have never visited the town physically. Instead, I travelled on Google Streetview and historical archives found online. The project is a modern travelogue. It reveals that the experience of place extends beyond physical presence: places are formed in memories, stories and dreams.

When the Blackbirds Return was created with the support of Parallel Platform 2nd Cycle and Alfred Kordelin Foundation.

Exhibition views

Solo exhibition at Valokuvakeskus Nykyaika, Tampere, May 7 - 30, 2022.