Aki-Pekka and Astrid Sinikoski: New Ghosts
Aki-Pekka and Astrid Sinikoski: New Ghosts
"We do not believe in ghosts, nor in photographs. We believe in each other.”
The New Ghosts series deals with the relationship between father and daughter as well as their attempts to understand life, change and the passing of time. The images reflect questions of the world and around identity. Questions on adulthood and childhood, life and death, as well as what kind of role models, ideas, standards of beauty, and scenarios of the future we give each other.
As kids our fears are often easy to name or recognise. We are afraid of monsters, ghosts, or the shadows behind the curtains. As we get older our fears often get more abstract. The new amorphous fears create new kind of ghosts into our lives, ghosts we can’t name yet.
By photographing their ghost studies father and daughter have recognized that fears are often the mirror images of dreams. After familiarizing oneself with a ghost, one kind of tame the previously faceless creature, and it tranforms to a gate. By walking through that gate you might find yourself, learn to understand your fellow human beings better or find a very own path towards your dreams. If you have examined the ghosts the right way, you will notice that even the scariest ghost is actually not your enemy but a guide towards your dreams.
“We have talked a lot, both with each other and with the ghosts we have met. Based on these conversations we have planned and built new rooms into this world and photographed them together. The photos in this photo series doesn’t show who we are, how we live or what we think. They just show the ghosts we have found and attached as part of our ghost study.”
The ghost study by Aki-Pekka and Astrid Sinikoski started in 2011. It will be published in its entirety in the year 2058 when Aki-Pekka will be 80, and Astrid 50 years old. Before that the photographs related to their studies can be seen as photographic exhibitions around the world. So far the New Ghosts photographs have been exhibited on three continents.
