The Photography of Heikki Willamo and a Mythical Journey
A Mythical Journey
Early in this Autumn last year I went to see a photography exhibition by Heikki Willamo in the Finnish Photograpghy Museum called The Mythical Journey or Myyttinen matka. It’s Nature photography at its best but this exhibition was a little different. It was photograpahy from Finland and Scandinavia by Heikki but trying to capture the ice age Hunters experience of Nature and the Landscape. Images of animals as they were seen by Ice age peoples.
Heikki had long been interested in the rock paintings the oldest dating from forty thousand years ago. Until the bronze age and the beginning of a farming culture these images, made by hunter-gatherers appreciated the world in animalistic terms where the great animals took center stage.
“Of the animals, the large mammals were especially important. They had powers and had a connection to the spirit world. They were perhaps the mythical ancestors of clans, spiritual guides for hunters, and familiars for shamans. Images were created of them deep in the ground — in the depths of the caves charged with powers.” — Heikki Willamo
Primordial Space
As hunter gatherers became farmers and the bronze age dawned then animals faded from center stage and animal images in the form of property of people became common as man as the subject of art took center stage. The way we saw the animals and our relation to them changed fundamentally. Heiki tried to recapture a feeling of how they were seen during the birth of man, when we too were one of the animals hunting, eating, living in the same landscape and in much the same way as them. When the world was made of a primordial space full of magic and the sounds of the animals were of the Gods calling!
Links
See photo gallery below Note all the photos you see are ones I took of Willamos original hung prints, go to Heikkis’ website to see more of his work and where he is exhibiting next.