In the series Black Landscape my inspiration has been traditional Chinese painting. The old masters would go for walks in the holy mountains and gather impressions. Back home they would then paint these impressions using ink and brush. The perspective in the long panoramas would change and there would be a kind of path to walk along inside the image. Also the circle was very important as a symbol of yin and yang, and of time as a never-ending circle.
Following this tradition became evident for me during my time in China. I started working with my white still-lifes which I had carried around in my head. They were very much interpreted as pictures of death, as white is the colour of death in China. These images could be executed anywhere, but soon the impact of being in this strange place and seeing the state of the environment became too strong. I had to make my own landscapes.
Deforestation, cultivation, erosion and air pollution change the landscape drastically. The image of a Chinese landscape exists more in people’s minds than in real life. This working with the white stills on the one hand and the landscape on the other formed a natural equilibrium, the yin and yang.
The fact that they came out so dark pushed them into being very much a dialogue inside my head, an inner landscape blending with what I saw. I consider myself a photographer, not a painter although I have said that I paint with light in my former work. In this work I actually use paint for the monochrome surfaces that I print on. This technique which I have been developing, allows me to freely move across the border between painting and photography. I can now talk about "image" without further naming it. Also in the white stills the actual objects are first painted, then photographed, and then printed on a painted surface.
Sandra Kantanen
