Humanity has now left behind the Holocene, a geological era in which the globe has been since the last ice age, and entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. In the Anthropocene, the human influence on the Earth is so great that the change is irreversible; in a sense, it is a point of no return.
Lasse Lecklin’s exhibition Crossings documents the crossing of that threshold. The images are aerial shots from Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull in Iceland. Parts of this glacier have retreated at an extraordinary pace since 1985. Since the year 2000, 15 percent of the glacier has disappeared. The climate of the polar region heats up more quickly than others, and glaciers are shrinking. The melting icebergs leave the glacier and flow down the glacier river to cross and meet the ocean, becoming water once more. The great white is gradually turning black.
The exhibition is a collaboration with sound artist Gabriel Gold, who composed and recorded the score inside glacial caves located within Vatnajökull. Lecklin began working on the Crossings series in 2016, and his work continues today. For Lecklin, it is important that the pieces have a scientific base, and he therefore works on them together with scientists.
Lasse Lecklin (b. 1982) is a Helsinki-based photographer. Lecklin attempts to make visible the changes in nature that have been caused by humans. He is particularly interested in how the enormous and uncontrollable processes in nature impact the landscape and how this molding of nature intermingles with the environment shaped by humans.
Lecklin graduated from the Aalto University's program in photography in 2015 with a master's degree in arts. He has also studied photographic journalism at the University of Tampere, photography at Konstfack, Stockholm, and at the School of Visual Arts in New York as well as art at Beaux-Arts de Paris. His earlier series “The Most Beautiful Nuclear Power Plants in Europe” (2014) has been exhibited in various locations in Europe.
* Holocene: the current warm climate period following the last glacial period
* Anthropocene: the epoch characterized by significant human impact on the environment, such as climate change
The Finnish Museum of Photography
Project Space
The Cable Factory, The Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 G, 00180 Helsinki
