Finland series by Jani Markus Miikkulainen
Finland 1
Finland 1
Jani Markus Miikkulainen
about his Finland series: "For this series, my initial inspiration was the surreal, erotic imagery of controversial photographer Joel Peter Witkin. I, however, didn't end up venturing into the gruesome regions of rot and corpses like Witkin, but chose to approach eroticism instead. I had no particular 'message' I wanted to convey with this series, I just wanted to experiment with visual elements of occultism and mysticism. However, I've never been interested of puristic restrictions that strangle the life out of creative ideas, so it felt natural to combine different ingredients. My main focus in the studio was to get great poses from Alyssa and a dramatic but flexible lighting, so I shot with soft, directional lights that I knew would also leave a lot of room for improvisation later on in Photoshop. I ended up combining lots of visual elements from occultism, satanism, Norse mythology, mystic writings, and alchemy in a very free-flowing manner. Personally, I don't practice occultism any more than religion, but their visual side has always fascinated me. I let Alyssa's poses guide my visual ideas, one image at a time. Fortunately, I had an abundance of great poses to choose from, as Alyssa was a very inventive and energetic model. In essence, I did the same thing I've done before as a musician; come up with a good plan and then improvise on it. Personally, I'm very pleased with the results." |