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hey muzungu
So far I have been on a plane with a broken engine and had to turn back to Schiphol, traveled to Entebbe the next day, spent the evening and night drinking beer in the garden bar of my hosts, went to the local market where a live chicken was selected, butchered and prepared (I played no part!), and tried to get over a culture shock. It seems you can’t really prepare yourself for Africa.
The people are very kind, both my Dutch hosts, their expat friends and the Ugandans I have so far talked to. The country is exceedingly beautiful, and very very poor. The contrast between the cozy expat life here and the lives of Kampala locals just a few streets away is harsh.
I wrote a very long text in my Finnish blog and am now kind of out of words. So you’ll get some hipshots from the nearby market and a promise for more details later.
I’ve been only blogging in Finnish during recent months, sorry. But what has happened? We had our third year exhibition thingy at Labs55 in The Hague and it went very well. After that, we had some exhibition stuff at Gallery Pulchri, also in The Hague. In February I started my internship with photographer Jan Banning, and that has been great. Tomorrow we travel to Uganda.
I will try to keep you up to date more! And maybe even upload some photos.
Networkweek
It is again the time of the year when we photo students have the opportunity to visit photographers in their studios, homes, and galleries. I have so far been to visit Stefanie Grätz, who was a lovely lovely person and really wanted to give us her time and helpful advise, and Willem Poelstra, who was also very impressive and surprisingly new in photography (he only graduated in 2005, but I thought he was an old star or something).
Will add links later. Am exhausted, a long muggy day in Amsterdam and tomorrow a long workday also in Amsterdam.
Pierre Faure: Japan
I noticed Pierre Faure’s photobook Japan while browsing in the bookstore today. I love the feel of the thing; the juxtaposition of japanscapes and people. I’ve done something similar when I was there. Only much more by chance and not by assignment.
Some of the photos can be seen here, only sadly in a really small size.
I don’t really know what to think of the concept, though. Isn’t it a bit National Geographic to have a book titled only “Japan”? Could you also have “Germany”, or perhaps “Denmark”? Or would that be boring, while Japan for us westerners is exciting and exotic?
For me, almost everything that has to do with Japan is dear, so… I could not buy the book at the bookstore – it was €60 – but managed to order it used via Amazon. €20 with shipping, not bad..
Long time no see, eh?
Here I am again. What has happened during the summer: I was almost forced to quit the Academy but happily managed to continue. I was in Finland for a few weeks. I went to Russia with my family. I went to Japan again. My husband got a job from Germany and I returned to the Netherlands. Now I’m back to school, or have been for almost two months, and this semester is busy as ever. Which is nice. Also stressful.
Untitled
Untitled is the title (heh, heh) of our upcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art.
Very nice to finally have an exhibition, although I must admit I am feeling exhausted after the collective evaluations. I did not sleep properly in a long while; am now definitely in need of a vacation… But first the exhibition + helping the fourth year students with their examination exhibition!
Welcome!
Welcome to the 2008-09 diary of Tuuli Saarikoski Fvt 2R, a photo student far from home!
Finding your way will hopefully prove to be easy. You can read the blog chronologically and in publishing order; most recent things are here first and then in the bottom of each page there is a link called “Previous” which will take you back in time. Or you can use categories to browse posts about different subjects; clicking on Photography, for example, will show you all my posts under that category. You can also use Tags to find even more detailed categorizations. The frame you see in the right hand side has a so-called “tag cloud” which shows you different tags. The larger the tag name, the more it contains posts. As you can see, Photography is definitely the largest tag, followed by Politics and Photojournalism. In a way, the tag cloud, besides helping with navigation, shows you which things and issues have interested me most…
I would recommend looking through the diary first chronologically. As this is a blog, it also has the possibility of commenting. Comments are welcome in all posts. Besides diary posts, there is a conclusion and an explanation about my methods of keeping this diary. Just follow the links and you’ll get right to them.
This will stay as the first post on the top page until the diary project has been evaluated. After that, the blog will continue!
Street Art, Street Life
I ordered a new photo book, Street Art, Street Life. It’s supposed to have work from 30 different street oriented photographers from the 1950’s to the present time (and was on sale at the American Book Center).
Racism and homophobia in F-land
Two news items today:
An 8-year-old ethnically Somalian girl was pushed out of a train on the platform by an adult Finnish male, who also called her “a monkey” and told her to get out of his way.
The discussion following this on the newspaper website concentrated on calling the story “a probable lie”, blamed the girl herself for some invented bad behavior “since that’s how they are” and called the news story propaganda since it told of an act of violence towards the Somalian minority. And, oh yes, someone managed to disparage the girl and her family and of course many times they were told to go back to Somalia.
In the Finnish parliament, a parliament member compared gay and lesbian families to “someone marrying a dog”. The discussion following this on the newspaper website lauded him for his “values”.
Sometimes I do not miss Northeast Europe at all.
dagboek 
