Avannaa
Visual design together with Patrik Söderlund, editing and sequencing.
Tiina Itkonen is a Finnish photographer best known for her photographs taken in Greenland. This was already the second book I designed for Tiina. Avannaa contains stunning high-quality panoramic photographs of the landscapes and people of Northern Greenland.
In Tiina’s photographs, blue skies, snow and ice seem to glow everywhere. Villages, people, dogs, glaciers and icebergs appear in astonishing light at different times of the day. During the daytime the light can be extremely harsh, while in the evenings and twilight it becomes soft and almost painterly.
Wide panoramic photographs are challenging in relation to the book format. Landscape formats in general present many challenges in books, but in this case the horizontal format was almost a necessity. Patrik Söderlund began the concept design of the book, while I completed the final design, doing extensive work particularly with the image sequencing. I wanted to create a continuous flow of full-spread images using 20 mm margins. This rhythm is occasionally interrupted by individual full-page photographs.
This is very much a photographer’s photobook — one that does not attempt to impress as a book object, but instead trusts the images and the subject matter, allowing them to speak for themselves. One of the challenges was how to organise the continuous stream of images so that the photographs would not begin to compete with one another. This was approached by placing similar situations and images consecutively, while at the same time allowing them to form a constantly evolving and changing visual flow — somewhat in the same way as in nature itself. The photographs do not form one unified narrative, but they possess a natural rhythm and cycle.
The book contains two essays: The Intimate Far North by anthropologist Jean-Michel Huctin and Frozen in Time by Pirkko Siitari, who was at the time the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki.
The first edition was published by the German publisher Kehrer Verlag and is now sold out. A new edition is currently in preparation and will be self-published by Tiina Itkonen.
| Artist | Tiina Itkonen |
| Publisher | Kehrer Verlag Germany |
| Size | Landscape 300 × 240 mm |
| Content | 104 pages / 45 images |
| Language | English |
| Texts | Jean-Michel Huctin, Pirkko Siitari |
| Binding | Sewn binding, hard cover |
| ISBN | 978-3-86828-512-3 |
