Passages

A passage is a channel or opening which a person or thing may pass through. It also means the transition from one stage to another, or a journey.

Passages is an ongoing project of digital photographic collages which Kaisu Koivisto has worked on since 2021. She begins with a photograph of a space, building or a structure. By means of digital collage she adds and subtracts information to suggest new ways of seeing the images, thus deconstructing and reconstructing the histories and meanings of images. The additions lead the process of viewing the image. Often the additions block and disturb the gaze, which result in an ambiguous reading of the photograph. At times the images become nearly abstract.

Koivisto’s approach to making the collages is intuitive. She examines the cues in the images and either amplifies or hides them. The series is much about imagining light, colors, shapes and life into the images and the spaces they depict. Transitional spaces emerge between the real and the imagined; between the dreamy and the repulsive.

Kaisu Koivisto photograps in abandoned factories and military areas. In the process of constructing Passages she utilizes mostly photographs of the former Kreenholm textile mill in Narva, Estonia, made during her residencies at NART Narva Artist residency in 2017 and 2022. The large factory halls have been redundant for years. The Kreenholm factory employed thousands of people at its heyday. Now the buildings are remains of a time when the mill produced vast quantities of fabrics for the Soviet Union market.