Northern Ladoga. Skerries. Lehmalahti Bay. January 2010

This image was produced in the Northern Ladoga region, a landscape historically associated with the Finnic and Karelian cultural sphere and incorporated into the Soviet Union in the mid-twentieth century as a result of territorial changes. At the time of recording, the area retained a spatial and environmental structure shaped by long-term interaction between rocky terrain, water systems, and traditional patterns of settlement. Such landscapes preserve not only natural conditions but also traces of cultural continuity that predate shifts in political boundaries. From a cultural-historical perspective, this region may be associated with the northern range of the mythological geography of the Kalevala — not as an illustration of the epic, but as a plausible environmental framework for its spatial imagination.

Large-format film photography followed by professional drum scanning allows the recording of the material structure of the landscape — terrain, stone, water, vegetation, and light conditions — with a high degree of visual accuracy. This file constitutes a documentary visual record of a historical landscape rather than an interpretative or stylistic representation.