Communication

2011

Series of 24 photographs

The photo series consists of 12 photo-pairs that have been taken in the Helsinki Immigration Police. Half of them are of the interior solutions of the waiting room, and the other half are of scribbles on the table surfaces of the reception desks.

The visit in the Helsinki Immigration Police office in the suburb of Malmi is unpleasant: the usual queuing time is 4-5 hours, there are not enough seats for every­one, the staff are hostile, the decoration in the waiting room is a kitsch blue-white Marimekko-curtain, posters on the walls presenting the force of the Finnish Police and A4 sheets giving various orders to the applicants of how to behave.

The scribbles in the table surfaces are mainly of the applicants’ home country and nationality and positive at­tributes connected with those. It seems that the hostile treatment toward the applicants, the amount of bureau­cracy they are facing and overall insecurity of receiving the residency permit drive the applicants as contra-reac­tion to long for their home country. This is contradicting the current activity they are performing, of applying for a residency permit to Finland, and it is the most desirable result for the Finnish Police, the official body aiming at regulating the amount of newcomers to Finland.

The photo series is showing a kind of a communication, which is not a dialogue but a monologue of each side that is further polarized as reaction to the monologue of the other side.