Rehearsals for Adulthood (It's dangerous to have prolonged exposure...)

Rehearsals for Adulthood is a photographic essay that touches on the theme of a young man's transition to adulthood, confronting himself, his feelings for his girlfriend, and various real-life situations, sometimes painful, sometimes funny. Created between 1997 and 2001, the series consists of single or paired photographs, accompanied by a handwritten text, a record of an event, a mood or a personal note. Placed side by side, they tell a story. Despite the impression of being invited into the intimate world of the series' protagonist, the script for the story was carefully prepared and acted out. The character we see in the photographs is not Jari Silomäki (1975– ), but an actor - like all the others in the Finnish artist's work. The annotations on the photographs, which look like quotes from a diary in the first-person narrative, allow the viewer a glimpse into the protagonist's private world, creating an ideal illusion of reality. Silomäki's photography blurs the line between truth and fiction. The Finnish artist's main interest is the search for new forms of documentary photography. In his series Ordinary Towns on Ordinary Days (2006-2007), for example, he manipulates images of ordinary, peaceful everyday life in various European cities so that we end up with black-and-white photographs that appear documentary but are imbued with the disturbing language of war photography. In addition to his photographic series, Silomäki is also a filmmaker, the most recent of which, Miklos' Invisible Home, received an Honourable Mention at the Cannes Short Film Festival - Cannes Shorts (2022). Marlena Chybowska-Butler