Back on the horse with Jonathan Hobin

It's been long enough since my last blog post and it's time to get back on the horse now. The end of 2014 was mostly consumed by completing assignments for my university courses and unfortunately that didn't allow any time for blogging. That and the "small" matter of my daughter... The new year has started rather good with the course grades all coming in at 4 (on the scale of 1 to 5) for which I'm really pleased as I can give myself credit for doing everything that I set my mind to, and doing it well, whilst looking after and raising a small child. Well done me, even if I say so myself!

One of my favourite freebie publications in Helsinki is without a doubt Six Degrees magazine. It never fails to entertain and I always read the column of David Brown, which always has poignant points about our culture in the eyes of an originally non-native.

What caught my eye in the January's edition of Six Degrees though, was the interview with Photographer Jonathan Hobin, whose exhibition "In The Playroom" has just closed at the Finnish Photography Museum. Gutted! Absolutely gutted that I didn't make it there on time, as this is the kind of photography that inspires me.

In his interview Jonathan Hobin explains that it is his way of exploring our society and attempting to show what the kids of current times learn from it through the act of play. His topics deal mainly with violence in its different forms and the different narratives surrounding that. Like the good cop-bad cop set up witnessed widely in our cultural texts, for example. Jonathan says that when staging his settings the kids get it straight away: "You want me to kill that person? No problem". So you see, the concept is familiar from very early on.

Jonathan encounters a lot of critique towards his work when people question his motives to go into the last sanctuary of innocence, the childhood, but he hopes for a proper discussion on what our "problem" is and finding out if there's something we can do about it. Well, I think that it's an topic that should definitely be looked at and one that I will get in touch with through following my child learning the rules of play of our society in the years to come. And should I ever have a second chance of checking out Jonathan Hobin's work, I will most certainly use it!