Susanna Majuri’s Underwater Photography Is Surreal And Strange

moray mair | Photography | August 15, 2012

Finnish photographer Susanna Majuri has created these extraordinary surreal, lush, sumptuous, underwater photographs of scenes in which you can’t help but be pulled into some sort of strange narrative. The images themselves are like layered stills all taken underwater and exposed to the cold arctic waters of her homeland. They are so bright and vibrant, rich and clear. When I saw them first I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a painting or a photograph.

If you like this work you should check out her older series too they too involved water but its intersting to see how her work has gone under, so to speak, become more dreamlike, more visually intense.

Here’s what she has to say about her work:

I suggest: we can be multiple. Touch your enviroment and it will show itself as fantastic. People are unpredictable. They are male and female at the same time. Eyes whisper sparks. The water is the most remarkable. It carries bodies. Water is colour. The shimmer and the deep green. My challenge is to see the reality in a non-traditional light. When I am shooting pictures, I have a premonition that something strange is about to happen. I follow the logic of colours, when I combine places, people and objects. To me the most important quality of photography is it´s capability to convey emotions.

I suggest: imagine the details a bit further. Who is drawing trees in to the pond. When you touch the surface of the house it turns out to be your companion. I throw myself into a fictive reality in the shootings. My heart beats wildly when I can feel the presence of surprises. When you´re in love, but bid farewell to the channel. You forgot the ship and it sinks. When the fall is unreachable behind the grey sorrow. I want to narrate feelings like in novels. The reader of images gets a chance to handle her lost and encounters. There is a place for danger. Did you die when you saw the shadow of the bird?

The language is a map and draws around us, unknown and familiar. I believe in a single image. It breaths strong.