SLEEP OF SHADOWS (2021)

Hippolyte Korjaamo / Helsinki

Comprising male portraits and nudes, this exhibition portrays a man as a sensitive figure, searching all at once for his own identity and another human being. He simultaneously directs his gaze towards another man and at himself, trying to discover the “right” way to be in this world. In Tero Puha’s images, masculinity sometimes appears as sensitive and vulnerable, in other moments, as something powerful.

The exhibition’s rhythm, via visually congruent images, forms a poetic whole, where narratives arise from the models’ subtle expressions and gestures. Despite their nudity and eroticism, the depicted men have something restrained about them; this man does not sweat or smell, he is a distant dreamlike image whose calm desire remains yet to be fulfilled.

With this exhibition, Tero Puha has returned to black and white photography, and with it, some core concepts within photography emerge: light, form and moment. In preparation for the exhibition, Puha went through his film archives from 1994 onwards, and even though the newest works in the exhibition are from 2020, most of the older images are also on display for the first time. Exhibition documents: © Milla Talassalo