I don’t remember how it came up but I was talking to Sean Tucker a while back and we ended up talking about different photographers that we had found recently and he asked me whether I’d seen the work of Maria Lax. Maria is a Finnish photographer based in London who had published a book called Some Kind of Heavenly Fire. Honestly the title alone was enough to pique my interest but what I found beyond it was a fantastic set of images that were inspired by a book her grandfather wrote documenting a series of encounters with UFOs by the locals of the small Finnish town where she grew up. I’ve always had a fascination with UFOs so I was interested straight away and the work beautifully straddles the line between reality and possibility. Maria takes a little X-Files, a bit of Twin Peaks, and maybe even a dash of Todd Hido and turns it into something uniquely her own—and that combination of style and vision is there in both her personal and her commercial work, which is no easy feat.

I’d like to thank Tom Booth Woodger at Setanta Books for not only arranging an introduction to Maria but also for providing me a copy of her wonderful book Some Kind of Heavenly Fire.

SHOW NOTES

Connect with Maria: Website | Instagram

Some Kind of Heavenly Fire

Setanta Books

 

Music in this episode: Please Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

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