In 2019, in the frames of a three-month-long course on photography and creativity led by Kalev Vapper at the Open Academy of the Estonian Academy of Arts, I explored photography as a tool for introspection. I took photographs looking at the sea at rest or raging, the sunlight moving on the wall of my bedroom, the wind blowing silently in the crowns of bare trees; I took photographs looking up or sideways… This act of avoidance, of turning away from what begs for attention and instead in a direction where not much is going on, nothing particularly interesting is at play, creates a space for reflection, a time to be quiet and serene.

Once photographed, the repeating, consecutive or nearly identical images invite us to attend to minute details that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Looking at an image that is one and the same and yet not, one’s eyes begin to make comparisons from point to point, tracing the lines, untangling, flipping through the archive of what has already been seen, fixating and regressing in rapid saccades. Much similarly, the needle and thread pierce through the surface of the printed photograph. Stitching restores that which is no longer, next to what most certainly has been, layering the past onto the present onto the past. Meditative as it becomes by way of prolonging the time spent with a single image, the process reflects a desire to trace back and connect with the past, preserve and anchor it in time and space. It’s an act of holding on as opposed to letting go, a weakness, a rigidness, a resistance—against forgetting but also against change, out of fear and the need to control. Stitching, even more so than taking a photograph, is a futile attempt to hold on to a passing moment. However, both serve to slow down time and thereby allow for the acceptance of life as an ongoing, ever-changing series of fleeting moments that cannot be repeated.

The images in the series Tree stitchings, Light and shadow, Breathe in, breathe out, andLooking where nobody else is looking were all made during this period.