The Oppressive Image of Cultural Literacy

In celebration of Esko Mannikko winning the Deutsche Borse Prize (check out his memorable acceptance speech here), we go back to Pierre Bayard, author of How to talk about books you haven't Read.

He writes about the need to "free ourselves of the oppressive image of cultural literacy without gaps... for we can strive toward this image for a lifetime without ever managing to coincide with it. "

"Truth destined for others is less important than truthfulness to ourselves, something attainable only by those who free themselves from the obligation to seem cultivated, which tyrannizes us from within and prevents us from being ourselves."

In other words, we don't have to know everything, our pictures don't have to strive towards some technical pitch of photographic/non-photographic perfection, or some academic pitch of all-knowing cleverness, or some commercial pitch of saleabiltiy, don't photograph for the art market, the mag market or the ad market, don't try to be cool, don't try to hip, don't try to be someone else, don't try to make money, don't try to get published or show your work. Anything that does that will just be disposable. Just be yourself and let the work will come from that.

Esko and Nan

A little bit of background on Esko Mannikko and Finnish photography from a lecture
given by Asko Makela in Iceland a few years back.

"Esko Männikkö is a good example of a mythical Finnish man. He does not talk much. Actually he talks quite seldom - like all the men in northern Finland. There is a story of Esko Männikkö’s exhibition opening in New York where he was present. Nan Goldin comes in and asks if they could exchange an artwork. Männikkö says slowly to her: “I hate your works. I change nothing.” He has also surprised galleries by staying in Finland and going for fishing with his silent friends instead of going to the opening of his exhibition.

True or not, Esko Männikkö was the mystical man from the beginning. His success started when Peter Schjeldahl wrote an article about his works in ARS 95 to Artforum. In the article he tells that he bought one of Esko Männikkö’s work for himself, which was a quite unusual statement. On the day when Artforum came out, New York gallerists tried to find out who represents him in New York or in Finland. They smelled business. But *Esko* Männikkö did not have a gallerist and did not even talk so much and even less in English. Claes Nordenhake started then to represent him from Stocholm. Esko Männikkö was the first internationally marketed Finnish photography artist.

Esko Mannikko

Esko Mannikko is up for his retrospective exhibition, Cocktails. It shows people from Finland in their country homes ( as shown in his fabulous book, The Female Pike) , the empty houses of rural Finland, a region depopulated because of universal economic and demographic pressures along with details of the animals that live in the places where Mannikko shoots.

“I photograph because I can’t do anything else,” says Mannikko. “And I don’t have a clear mission in my mind of what I want to show. I started with people living around me and photographed these people because they are like me. They live in the country and hunt. That’s what I do, so my work is a landscape of my own soul - but what my soul is I couldn’t say.”

Mannikko will be giving a talk at The Photographers' Gallery on Friday, which has to be good. John Davies, Fazal Sheikh and Jacob Holdt will give talks in the following weeks.