My works explore growth. I search the things that strengthen us, makes us grow. The things that shape our identity in everchanging ways. I try to make these changes visible. How do we search for the change? Environment is important to us, to find a place we feel parallel with. We look for a place where we find ourselves.
My interest in photography lies in capturing a change, a feeling. Capturing some small events that made a change in us. How light appeared then. It might be something insignificant, a fracture of color or a certain shape. I wish my photos would be equivalent of a feeling that made a little change in us, made us grow. Something not clear, a hint of a moment that was once present. Something that was visible only that one time.
I have been photographing the elements of a place, elements I find are not always visible, hidden. How we adapt to a certain place. And how we seek a place out of urban. I find it most important to show a certain emotion in a photograph, emotion of people or of their place. Nature is often emphasized in my works, how it grows with us, in us. How we adapt to it, or forget it. Working with medium size film camera gives me freedom to go everywhere with my camera, search the little details that changed our ideas from outside.
I photograph structured nature, spaces we build for ourselves to make us feel better while the real climate is struggling by our actions. I want to show our struggle to find our own place but also the struggle of our environment. Lately I have been interested in the environmental politics and how the problems of people affect our environment. I hope to work with this issue a long time.
Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen is a Finnish Visual Artist and Photographer. She graduated 2012 from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts as Master of Fine Arts. After that she worked in the artist residencies of Cité des Arts (Paris) and Hôtel Chevillon (Grez-Sur-Loing) and shorter periods in residencies in Nepal, Italy and Tunisia. She has had many solo exhibitions in Finland and has participated in group exhibitions in Finland as well as abroad.
Recent years she has collaborated with musician and pianist Anniina Lehtinen on the project Water Rituals that has been performed in many countries and events.