All photos © Ville Kansanen

Ville Kansanen (b.1984) is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist based in California. He works with photography, video, installation- and land art.

Kansanen is an autodidact whose work has been featured in several print and online publications, such as American Photo Magazine, GUP Magazine, SFAQ and Diffusion Magazine. His awards include a Lucie Award and IPA Fine Art Photographer of the Year. Datz Press published his first monograph in 2022; titled Numen after a series of work spanning from 2016 to 2021. He has exhibited in solo- and group shows internationally.

Kansanen employs the traditions and techniques of photography, land– and installation art to create work that exists and functions within photographic space. Most of his work is made in the desert where geologic time is made visible; where habitable landscape reaches its terminal state; and where cultural memories of ancient religions remain tangible. It is within those conditions that Kansanen constructs his images, often from several exposures and over long spans of time. He returns to the same desolate locations year-after-year for weeks at a time. Living and working out of his work truck, he constructs installations from wood, boards, native rocks, and soil. Often, he will revive and recycle materials from weathered installations, left on-site from previous months and years. Eventually all the materials are collected – leaving no trace of his presence. For Ville, photography presents a space to form a more profound relationship with Nature.

Numen is an installation and land art series by Finnish artist Ville Kansanen. Currently working and living on the west coast of the United States, Kansanen uses photography as a medium to rediscover the ancient human connection and dedication to nature. He goes into the western deserts of the United States- the terminal landscape of the Anthropocene and the nascent landscape of Abrahamic religion- and captures the horizons of light and earth’s encounter. He creates cosmic installations using wood, boards, strings, ropes, native rocks, soil, and revived materials from previous installations, all connected with surrounding nature through light sources such as the sun and moonlight. This book contains photographic works by the artist signifying his spiritual communication with nature as well as sketches and artist notes showing his process.

Published by Datz Press, 2022.
Hardboard cover / Exposed spine binding, 136 pages
ISBN 978-89-97605-35-4

Numen is available for purchase at Datz Press

All photos © Joey Lehman Morris

Joey Lehman Morris is a photographic visual artist, and educator of studio art and art history. Homegrown in Los Angeles, Morris received a BFA from the University of Southern California, and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and has been teaching, producing, exhibiting, and participating in curatorial projects in Los Angeles ever since.

Morris works with analog and digital technologies (though most often, analog) to make photographs of our material and geographic or environmental surroundings. His pictures serve as a kind of portrait of California, paying attention to tangible influences that have formed the fabric of place and the construction of geographic and cultural identities. Morris' work shows his interest in looking closely at convergent histories of past and present while simultaneously romanticizing and looking critically at the California landscape.