Lauri Eriksson

► A Polaroid is as beautiful, fragile, and fleeting as life itself. The Finnish photographic artist Lauri Eriksson uses this medium to capture images of woodlands in and around Helsinki. During the pandemic, the natural scenery found right next door – in vanishing islands of plant life squeezed between housing blocks and urban sprawl – filled the artist with a powerful nostalgia and sense of the sublime that resides in every fragment of nature.

The Polaroid was declared dead long ago, but its power of expressivity remains undiminished. It has proved itself a highly versatile medium of contemporary art with an evocative power to invoke the fleeting nature of life today. In the pixel-perfect digital age, the blurry imprecision and analogue softness of Polaroids add a poignant human voice to the dialogue between the past and the future.

Lauri Eriksson has held solo exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. He has been experimenting with Polaroids since the 1990s. This marks his fourth book of photography, featuring a pick of his finest works from the past few years.