Laidalla - ytimessä / Off-center

Laidalla - ytimessä / Off-center - Dead center
by Kari Eloranta, SYNDETICA 2014
This photo book consists of about 200+ black and white and color images together with
a bilingual captions and short texts. It is a summary of work during the last decade,
several long, independent trips covering large swaths around Sahel and Central Africa.
The main focus is on man’s lot in a hardening environment, in circumstances imposed
by the unforgiving Nature and Man himself through conflict. These forces drive men and
women to abandon their traditions and homesteads and head elsewhere, many of them
trying to reach Europe. Most of this is reported in media only through random snippets
of bloody imagery perhaps with a token caption. Then some bandage is applied through
aid organizations, our conscience is soothed and what follows is forgotten.
The images are presented in sequences with the seven background texts inbetween.
Rough outline, the text chapters:
1. The Fallout. The soft southern belly of Europe. Allegory to an earlier dramatic event
at Palomares, Spain.
2. Cans and coups. Mauritanian life. The old rule, the stagnation, the foreign interests,
economic and else. Black Africans trying to circumvent the Rulers of Sahara and
Maghreb.
3. Station Sahel. Daily life in Sahel. The traditions, the beliefs, the spectacular visual
and vocal sphere and the intrusion of modern life into it. The appearance of a new but
ancient straightjacket; the Islamists on the move.
4. Green abyss. The deep end of Central Africa. Aftermath of the Congo war: the
players, the politicians, the profiteers and the common man in between. Things
unresolved: the loose cannons in the bush, the embers of Rwandan genocide burning
along the east of DRC, the foreign meddling.
5. Art Decay. What is left of the colonial splendor? What does Kisangani tell of Man?
6. Match of interest. Artesanal gold digging in Ituri. Congo in a nutshell: rich, volatile,
violent, busy.
7. Along the Rift. Ethiopian progress, relatively speaking. Djiboutian double dealing
absurdity. The badlands in the Horn: divided Somalia. Somaliland progressing, the rest
pushing men to the arms or to the boats, to make a futile escape.

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