Gravity
Book Review
Artist: Aapo Huhta
Photobook: Gravity
Publisher: Kult Books
Specs: Embossed double-folded softcover, 225 × 275 mm, 56 pages
Price: €39
When it comes to parenthood, we often hear about maternal instincts, yet it is relatively rare to hear about paternal ones. Apart from the immediate gut sentiments that revolve around the protection and nurturing of a new human that is suddenly forever entangled with us, our mortality also immediately becomes a very real tangible feeling breathing on our necks. This subjective juxtaposition of life and death is something that Aapo Huhta dives into in his monograph Gravity. Inspired by the life-changing event of becoming a father, he reflects on this novel occurrence.
The book presents a collection of black and white studio portraits that are combined with images of dead bodies, more concretely mummified remains captured by Huhta in the Capuchin Catacombs in Sicily. By adopting dark-room experiments in his imagery, Huhta’s depictions of bodies appear to be submerged in water or an abstract cosmos due to chemical residues and light leaks. They seem to exist in this subjective imaginary space, something yet to be, a liminality of sorts.
Huhta’s experimental approach to the medium of photography consciously distorts bodies, making it unrecognizable which ones belong to those alive and those across the abyss. This inexactness results in a work that is concentrated on experiencing it through feelings rather than optics. Our vision is obscured to not be able to completely understand. Instead, we are invited to fully dive into vertigo and existential malaise.
“(…) Our vision is obscured to not be able to completely understand. Instead, we are invited to fully dive into vertigo and existential malaise.“
Furthermore, there is an emphasis on textures in the publication — a brown rough cover combined with matt translucent paper at the beginning and end, while a thick coated one is used for the inside. Our first engagement with the book is through touch that triggers a certain feeling, perhaps a memory. The entrance is soft, we begin a journey and arrive at an unknown destination that Huhta carefully prepared for us. After experiencing it for a while, we are escorted out, in the same way as we entered, gently guided out of this world and left with mixed emotions inside ourselves.
“(…) Marooned somewhere between being shocked and mesmerized at the same time, Huhta creates an impactful rumination on our fragile existence.“
Marooned somewhere between being shocked and mesmerized at the same time, Huhta creates an impactful rumination on our fragile existence. A clear memento mori that was triggered by the birth of his daughter, has now been transported on us. Both beautiful and grotesque at the same time, we accept fate and fall deeper into the black hole of in-betweenness the artist crafted for us.
Gravity is available for purchase via Kult Books here.
Aapo Huhta
is a Helsinki-based artist who combines elements of documentary practice and experimental darkroom techniques, forming ambiguous and fragmented aesthetics and narratives in his oeuvre. Apart from Gravity, he has previously published Block (2015) and Omatandangole (2019). In 2014, he was selected by Magnum Photos as one of the Top 30 Under 30 photographers. In 2015, he received the award of the Young Nordic Photographer of the Year by Fotografiska, and later in 2020, he was named Young Artist of the Year in Finland.
Kult Books
is an independent publishing project run by Janne Riikonen in Stockholm, Sweden. Kult Books publishes photography books and other lens-based visual arts in monographs and artists’ books. Kult embraces a personal artistic approach and visual language. The physical form of the books is of high importance to Kult and every project is designed in detail together with the artist to support the concept of the work.
Text by Linda Zhengová
Curator of Discarded Magazine & XXX
She is a photographer and writer dealing with the topics of trauma, gender and sexuality.