Jonne Heinonen
The year was 2001. I was 15 and at a confirmation camp in Siikaniemi, near the city of Lahti. During this camp I experienced many unpleasant moments, especially due to bullying. Then I met a young Roma, Tino. He had the courage to put a stop to what his mates were doing.
Years later, I started studying photography in Stadin AO vocational college and was introduced to the concept of documentary photography. I remembered the help and support I had received from Tino and started thinking about the Roma minority in Finland. When a course on documentary photography began at the college, I pondered if it would be possible to document the Finnish Roma community through photography. Could I use photography as a way to convey their thoughts and experiences? I realized I was wondering why I (we) know next to nothing about this minority. A minority who many think they recognise based on looks but who are rarely mentioned in the history or civics classes even in upper secondary school.
As I began working on the project, I soon ran into situations where this subject, the Roma minority, mostly raised questions about what the Finnish Roma looked like in photos. People were largely interested in the aesthetics of photography. Only few had questions about my relationship to the minority I was documenting or why I was doing the project, what was the purpose of it? These questions reminded me of the ethical challenges of documentary photography: I feel that a photographer, the one who takes the photo, is always taking something for himself. Especially when turning the lens on people or the living beings, it is important to acknowledge the power dynamic between you and the person you are photographing. A photographer should pause and consider what they are doing, what are the reasons behind it and for what purpose. Even so a photographer cannot completely erase themselves from their photos.
Already during the first years of working on the project, I realized that I was not able to express through photographs who the Finnish Roma truly are, especially as I was an outsider. Although the photos could depict the outward appearance of a member of the Finnish Roma minority, but they could not genuinely convey who they were as individuals. Perhaps it is a truly unattainable goal when photographing people.
This realisation led me to stop photographing the Roma minority in 2018.
A year went by. I discussed these issues often with my friend Samuel wherever we were – on the phone, in a car, at his house in Jyväskylä while eating salmon and mashed potatoes. He reminded me how important to him the existence of these photographs was and what they meant for them, the Finnish Roma – the thoughts of the mainstream society were secondary.
Based on Samuels reasonings, I decided to continue the documentary project together with him. And constantly sharing thoughts on the subject.
In addition, I often talked about these topics with my Sámi friend Lada who is also an artist. She made me contemplate the visual representation of minorities. Lada explained how the western culture has traditionally depicted Sámi people and other minorities as exotic and unknown, without any real connection to the people in the pictures. This has led to some problematic photographs that often end up othering the pictured minority. For example, the day-to-day imagery of the Sámi is often idealized and produced by people outside the minority. The reliability of archival material has been and is still questionable when that material has been taken by people coming from outside the minority.
Although I did not succeed to convey the thoughts and ideas of the people in the photographs included in Rom, I got the opportunity to be present, listen and just be. To just be, that to me was greater than photography.
To me, this duality of a photograph – that I truly like – is important, special and contradictory. A photograph is beautiful but at the same time distant and fragile. It also has an ace up its sleeve: it connects time and space so that it can also be considered a record of something.
But in the end, what can a photograph tell us, only a tiny fracture of what you thought it might convey? Much depends on how informative the photograph is. In the end, it speaks to the audience often about something personal from which the layers of interpretation are drawn. This, to me, is the strength of a photograph.
As much as I have been mulling over this over the years, I cannot free myself from the questions surrounding the complexity of photography. Nevertheless, I want to believe that if an artist takes time to consider these questions, one day they might be able to answer at least some of them.
Maybe.
I want to thank all the people who I have had the pleasure to meet and get to know on this 10-year-long journey. They have given me more than I could have ever expected.
Best
Jonne