We are delighted to announce the publication of this book. It showcases some of the photographic work we have been doing, and is the outcome of collaborative work between Lena Malm, who has been working as the photographer on our project throughout; Ninnu Koskenalho, our research coordinator for the last three years and founder of Antroblogi, as the editor of the texts; and six of the ethnographic research team: Sarah Green (leader of the Crosslocations project), Phaedra Douzina-Bakalaki, Samuli Lähteenaho, Carl Rommel, Patricia Scalco and Laia Soto Bermant.
The book is based on numerous visits that Lena Malm made to Mediterranean areas being researched by the ethnography team between 2016 and 2019 (i.e. before the Covid-19 pandemic). The images give a distinctive view of what might count as ‘Mediterranean’. Apart from the fact that it includes places in North Africa and the east Mediterranean as well as southern Europe, the photographs are informed by the idea of Crosslocations: the team was trying to understand the many different connections and disconnections between places, rather than focus on the idea that places have to be one thing in particular. It was an exploration of how people can co-exist in the same places and yet be living in completely different worlds simultaneously.
The outcome provides a unique glimpse of a different way to see both the places depicted in the pictures and the Mediterranean overall. Each photograph in the book can tell a number of stories. They capture some glimpses of the crosscurrents of life and the way buildings, landscapes, people, animals, things, and activities co-exist, sometimes jumbled together randomly, sometimes planned carefully and occasionally full of visible and invisible borders that keep things apart.
The texts that accompany the photographs tell different stories from the ones seen in the photographs: they provide glimpses of the ethnographic work done, and of each researcher’s engagement with these fieldsites, with the photographs and with the photographer and with the idea of Crosslocations. Some of the texts are conversations with Lena; some are stand-alone descriptions.
Collectively, the book brings together a five-year Crosslocations project: it provides different images, different ways of telling stories, different regions, and different connections and disconnections. While it focuses particularly on the photographic work done in the project, it also provides some sense of different ways that Crosslocations can be drawn upon to look at the world otherwise.
You can access the book freely as a PDF below. A hard copy of the book is also available for sale at Rosebud Publications (at https://www.rosebud.fi/2020/?sivu=tuote&ean=9789527313381). The printed book is the best way to appreciate the full richness of the photographs.