Cherish Your Ineffable Memories — Finland Through the Lens of Lee Nukhui

Cherish Your Ineffable Memories — Keeping Memories That Cannot Be Put into Words

Since 2011, Lee Nukhui has photographed the life and culture of Northern Europe from his base in Copenhagen, Denmark. “Photography and travel,” he says, “are about exploring and recording many different universes, each filled with countless stars.” Through his series ‘SURFACE,’ shot as he traveled through Finland to capture stories of its modern and contemporary art, we read another kind of exploration and record.

Photos Lee Nukhui
Words Kim Yunmi, Lee Nukhui

It has been quite a long time since COVID grounded us. A life without travel feels strange and uncomfortable. Was it human arrogance to believe we could go anywhere, anytime, simply by boarding a plane? In our endless hunger for new journeys, haven’t we forgotten the precious moments of past trips far too quickly? The colors shaped by a place’s particular light and air, the scent of wood from old timber buildings, the calm forests and lakes that made complicated thoughts disappear, early-morning walking paths, the museums we sought out with a map in hand because we “had to see them,” and the countless photographs we took: haven’t we buried them deep in a drawer all too fast? Now that we can’t set out on a trip, the memories of past journeys have become even more precious.

I take out the photographs buried down there and turn back, for a moment, a time that has only ever rushed forward. The places, the people, the stories and the feelings in the pictures come back to life with astonishing clarity. A past journey rises to the surface of the present.

This photographic project began in 2019 as a reporting trip, the ‘Finland Art Tour,’ made with the cooperation of Visit Finland. Photographer Lee Nukhui, Kim Yunmi, author of ‘Designer Mind,’ and Design Press traveled together. While journeying through the southwestern coastal towns of Tuusula, Fiskars and Turku, they encountered Finland’s cultural heritage in modern and contemporary art, music and literature, along with the stories of its legendary artists, and the project gathers those stories.

As a verb, “surface” means “to rise to the surface what had been buried below.” Looking at my old photographs, I dream of free travel for all of us and recall the journeys behind me, just as something buried below rises to the surface. A pandemic may tie down our feet, but it cannot take our memories away.