Puranen, Jorma (b. 1951), Finnish photographer, resident in Helsinki. In the early 1970s, when still a student in Helsinki, Puranen encountered the Sami people in the Scandinavian north. His first book, Maarf Leu'dd: Photographs of the Skolt Lapps (1986), a poetic reportage, gives voice to the Skolt Sami group in north-east Finland. In concurrent projects—Alpha et Omega (1989) and Imaginary Homecoming (1999)—Puranen's work turns conceptual, staged, layered, while maintaining its focus on Sami culture. Imaginary Homecoming returns, as it were, photographs of the Sami from Roland Bonaparte's 1888 anthropological expedition to their source: a photographic memorial and act of empowerment, real and metaphorical, extending across a century and vast spaces. Subsequent works such as Curiosus Naturae Spectator explored histories of representation and the framing of nature by culture.
— Jan-Erik Lundström
