Otherworld

With my newest photobook Otherworld, I invite you into a realm where the fragile boundaries between the known and the unknown, the real and the imagined, dissolve.

Otherworld is an exploration into a precarious state between daydream and unrest. It intertwines the imaginary with the every day through its selection of photographs ranging from analog snapshots to staged and digitally altered portraits. The photographs were made over seven years, continuing the seven-year cycle in my practice. My previous book “I Was an Apple and I Got Peeled - But It Was a Good Thing” (2016) was published seven years earlier and also covered seven years.

Otherworld dreams of a new affinity between the human and the inhuman, the organic and the inorganic, transforming existing hierarchies. Through the photographs, the landscape becomes something both familiar and strange. In these moments, nature is no longer simply a backdrop, but an active force, haunted by memory and transformation.

The photobook unfolds as a journey into a realm where landscapes seem to pulse with an uncanny energy, where the familiar is subtly transformed into something enigmatic, and at times, impossible to place.

This book is not mine alone. The design of the book, created by Samuli Saarinen, also plays a critical role in shaping its narrative. Saarinen’s thoughtful graphic approach provides a tactile, immersive experience, where the materiality of the book amplifies the conceptual space of Otherworld. The work is enriched by the contributions of writers Jenna Sutela, Sini Silveri and Ilari Laamanen, whose words resonate with the same sense of ambiguity and transformation that runs through the images. Jaakko Pallasvuo's intriguing illustrations provide an additional visual language that reinforces the sense of a world in flux.

Buy the book here.

Hertta Kiiski is part of Issue 17 by Guest Editor Torbjørn Rødland.

Check out her Artist Feature Plasticenta.