Saga

In 1970 the Finnish American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen began making images of himself - and never stopped. During these decades he has steadily generated astonishing and memorable pictures exploring his body's interaction with the physical environment while pushing the boundaries of both portraiture and landscape photography." "Though he has made notable images in historic cities (Paris, Prague, Helsinki) and even his own Massachusetts home, Minkkinen mostly stages these events

for his camera in and around natural, even elemental, settings: forests, lakes, rivers, mountains, deserts, canyons, oceans, fields of ice. He has buried his lean, unclothed body in snowdrifts, hung from ski lifts, submerged himself under rapids, dangled over precipices - and simply dipped his fingers into shallow water. The actions he performs frequently demand strength, test his endurance, and involve considerable risk." "Elegant, witty, inventive, and often stunningly beautiful, the

photographs he generates in these circumstances are first and foremost acts of visual creativity. Minkkinen, who occasionally uses friends and family as participants in his pictures, always makes the exposures himself. He does not subject the resulting images to digital intervention or darkroom alteration; they depict what actually took place before the lens. Cumulatively, they constitute a unique mix of performance art, body art, and photography - while forming an astonishing account of one man's primal encounter with the civilized and natural worlds.