FISHSHOT


  • Photographer
    Javier Corso
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    OAK stories
  • Date of Photograph
    2014-2015
  • Technical Info
    BW digital photography

FISHSHOT is a documentary photography project which shows the hardest and least known Finland’s reality. A country that stands for quality of life but at the same time hides high rates of suicide, homicide and violence. The excessive consumption of alcohol is present in more than half of the mentioned cases. The emotional isolation, sentimental repression and exaltation of self-sufficiency largely explain the causes of their problems.

Story

I visited Finland for first time in the summer 2012. I had met a Finnish filmmaker in Barcelona a couple of months earlier and I was fascinated by all the new information about his homeland that I got through our many conversations full of silences. Finland is not "the best country in the world", as the other countries around the world have said in the last years. They have many things to be proud of, but at the same time Finnish people suffer the consequences of many problems that nobody is actually talking about. Silences are a part of the Suomi grammar.

FISHSHOT is a documentary project which shows the hardest and least known Finland’s reality. A country that stands for quality of life but at the same time hides high rates of suicide, homicide and violence. The excessive consumption of alcohol is present in more than half of the mentioned cases.
Alcohol consumption is an habit. A deeply rooted habit in their society and it is very difficult to change. Some affected people know this, but they don't care. Everybody drinks a lot and the kinds of alcohols are usually hard liquors and beer. Finnish people should be able to talk openly about this, but currently they can't. Some associations are working hard to help the families to revert this situation, trying to find the causes.

I visited Finland several times in the last three years, and at the beginning this was a project that talks about excessive alcohol consumption, but the real subject I wanted to show is what causes it: loneliness, miscommunication and a concept I learned for the first time in Finland: pärjäämisen eetos - which translates as “the ability to deal with problems alone.” It is actually the only language in the world that has a two-word sentence for this.

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