Nondigitally Estonian

Written by Lee Slaymaker

As an adult photographer I am aware of particular rules used within the medium to create images with impact and drama, to create tension and contrast, or to convey an idea of my choosing through the work I produce. Yet these images, produced in collaboration with Karel Polt at the Eesti School, go beyond these conventions, ignore the rules and instead create something altogether more dramatic: personal meaning.

Common themes run throughout each project, with flowers and trees being significantly represented throughout, and it is in this that we can see the participants beginning to develop an insight into the aesthetics of beauty, and taking their first steps to becoming artistically literate individuals with an understanding of how their work interacts with dominant ideologies and discourses within our society. However despite these common themes we can also see that each child’s project is unique in the way that significance is given to the objects photographed. This gives us a direct insight in to how each of the children participating in this project views the world around them.

Whether it is Oskar exploring his home, toys and relationship with his younger sibling, or Kymbali’s exploration of her local area and the sights seen around her in the city, each of these projects evokes within me a nostalgic reminder of my own childhood and the way in which I sought to understand the world around me. In this sense these projects are deeply personal and yet also universally relevant; each highlights the relationship that the children in the project have with their own environments and the people that play a significant role in their lives, whilst also evoking memories of similar moments of intense fascination from our own childhoods. As a result these images are heavily layered with the child’s own sense of self-identity, with the focus of each photograph being not on the aesthetics, nor on how it might be viewed by others, but instead on capturing images that have intensely personal subjectivities; essentially each image was shot because it was of interest to the photographer, and held value to them.

It is in seeing the way that the children assign worth in this way that we gain an unpretentious view of their world, completely honest in its representation and lacking guile. This project is both beautiful and humbling, and I tip my hats to the young photographers who have produced so effortlessly what countless professionals spend many hours seeking to fake or fabricate.