Description
Maria Lax is a London based photographer originally from a small town in Northern Finland. She is known for her use of colour and experimental camera techniques.
Maria Lax’s work has been exhibited at fairs and festivals worldwide. Lax was one of the winners of British Journal of Photography’s Female in Focus awards, 2019 and a finalist in the BJP Portrait of Humanity, 2020, PHMuseum Photography Grant Finalist, 2020, Winner of the In Cadaques festival Open Call, 2020.
Maria’s first monograph, Some Kind of Heavenly Fire was published in February 2020 and is currently on it’s second print run. It was chosen as one of the photobooks of the year by Photobookstore and one of the 5 finalists for the Finnish Photobook of the Year 2020. Taken by the Tide was published by Nazraeli Press, 2023, is available as part of their One Picture Books series.
Maria was selected as one of the ‘Best New Talent of Photo London 2020’ by the Guardian and is the recipient of the Finnish Art Promotion Centre’s One Year Grant for 2021.
Contact: tom@opendoors.gallery
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Taken by the Tide
Thoughtfully accumulated, captured and created over the course of a tumultuous decade or so, this brooding series reflects on the artist’s relationship to ‘home’. The images are at times delicate and vulnerable, with rare subjects isolated in shadow, seemingly enveloped by an inhospitable world. At times the light or a spectre seems to encourage us to follow deeper into the scene, only to realise we are chasing something too elusive to fully experience. Walking the line between fact and fiction the images resemble both the artist’s memories of home and the strange, unrecognisable lands that surround her.
“Feeling alienated and as though the few remaining threads to my native country had come undone, I spent years drifting in search of a new place to call home. This has led me to explore the challenges of shaping a new identity as an immigrant in a fragmented world, and what it means to belong somewhere. The work is a reached hand towards the generations who came before me, to better understand generational trauma, the hopes and fears that have echoed through me for decades.” – Maria Lax, 2023
