Outi Harma is from Lapland, Finland. Over twenty years ago her move to the warm, multicultural city of Los Angeles was the catalyst that catapulted her creative expression.
It was a beautiful fresh morning with wispy clouds and I was to experience the impressive formation in relative solitude before all the hikers showed up. I went back at night to shoot it with a starry background but that proved much more technically challenging than I expected.
I’m now a proud American but at the same time that doesn’t stop me from being proud of my British heritage. The two countries have so much in common while at the same time being so different. It’s a fascinating contradiction that I’ve spent years dissecting from my vantage point of having lived in both countries for decades.
There’s a quote along the lines of ‘Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed but being negative will guarantee you wont’ and that sentiment works for me.
It’s strange that I have to defend LA, but I often find myself doing so. I really believe it has something for everyone and for those who dislike LA, I would suggest they haven’t explored it enough.
I have created artistic interpretations of my own Ikebana arrangements and, as I have done in much of my previous work in other subjects, revealed the distress that persistently undermines our aspirations of beauty and serenity.
