Franco Figari

ELIAS LÖNNROT'S HOMELAND is a book of photographs, mainly landscapes. Most of the pictures have been taken in the countryside between Sammatti and Lohja where Elias Lonnrot passed his childhood on the shores of lake Valkjärvi. Therefore the book is dedicated to Elias Lonnrot but also well represents the main ecosystems of Southern Finland: the Lake system formed by the last glaciation 10.000 years ago, the Countryside with its cultivated fields, the old farms and barns, the Forest, with its pine, fir and birch trees where a careful observer will be fascinated by the particular details of the undergrowth especially in autumn during ruska time. Sometimes Finnish landscape is mistankely considered monotonous and repetitive. In this book the author wants instead to demonstrate how Nature, Master of painting, using brushstrokes of light, can change the same landscape also in a few minutes. In the last chapter of the book (GENIUS LOCI) the author decribes his hidden and magic corner of Finland, a place on the rock near lake Valkjärvi where he often sits surrounded by silence and observes the landscape through the lens of his camera, at dawn, at sunset, in the middle of the night with the full moon. Depending on the light the same landscape is always different! The images of the book belong to a simple world, the same world only partially changed where Elias Lonnrot lived 200 years ago a world that can reveal a mystery or may uncover an idyll. These are the chapters:INTRODUCTION with mapELIAS LÖNNROT'S HOMELANDSTILL WATERSTHE COUNTRYSIDESKIES OF WATERTHE FOREST AND ITS UNDERGROWTHWHEN NATURE SLEEPSGENIUS LOCICaptions are concentrated at the end of the book and are enriched with the beautiful illustrations of Annalisa and Marina Durante

After FINLAND LAND OF LIGHTS, ELIAS LONNROT HOMELAND, ICE PAINTINGS SCULPTURES OF SILENCE this is my fourth photographic book published on Finland and is my final work of many years spent travelling and photographing Finland landscapes with the eye of a foreign Nature photographer.

This book is dedicated to the forests of the Kuusamo and Posio region during the cold Arctic winter. Pictures have been taken along the secondary roads that cut like blades the taiga, along the rivers in the deep valleys and canyons and mostly above the hills of the Riisitunturi National Park where the Arctic Rime (in finnish “Tykky”) can be seen best in the winter months. The stratifications of ice and snow that deposits on the branches of the trees is an extraordinary phenomenon that occurs when the temperatures drop to - 30°. On the hills fo Riisitunturi one enters into a fantastic fairy-tale landscape: trees look no longer like trees, but become a silent motionless army of strange beings, ice angels, characters from cartoons, sea monsters and dinosaurs, a world of bizarre contemporary art sculptures. Turning the pages of this book you can listen to the silence of the woods, hear the wind, listen to the heavy breathing that accompanies the difficulty of walking in deep snow and the freezing cutting air of the Arctic winter that goes into the lungs. To enjoy this book at best, try not to look at the photographs all at once, look at a few pages at a time and discover the magic and the mystery of the place as you step into each picture. Up to only a few years ago the Tykky phenomenon occurred regularly every winter and could quite easily last till the end of March. Global warming is changing the climate and it is possible that soon these images of the Ice Forest will document a natural phenomenon that is becoming rare to see.

The book is a tribute to the natural Beauties and hidden sights of Finland, a pure magic trip across one of the last European Countries where Nature still has the upper hand. This publication exceptional for its format and great attention to detail comes out rightly in a very important historical moment for Finland that in this 2017 celebrates 100 years of independence. Franco Figari, the author of photos and texts, has worked for years with passion on the territory demonstrating how Finland is not a monotonous landscapes country of lakes and endless forests as it is sometimes mistakenly regarded by the average tourist. As it is well evidenced from the title of the book, it is the Light, through the lens of the photographer, that makes the landscape change many times in a day. Even more interesting is the fact that often the search for Light is made by the author. In the heart of the night, during summertime in Lapland when sun never sets or during winter when the Northern Lights paint the starry sky and the glare of the snow lights up the arctic nights. The sequences of the panoramic photos do not follow a specific geographical or temporal order: images of winter landscapes dressed in white alternate with images of the pastoral countryside in southern Finland in the heart of summer; from the Lake District of Central Finland one crosses the endless forests of the taiga near the eastern border with Russia, from spring blooms colours one switches to autumn colours when birch forests and the undergrowth blaze up in yellow and red. The final section of the book, devoted to the captions, is enriched with the precious drawings of two brilliant Nature illustrators, Annalisa and Marina Durante.