Conceptual nominee

Reflecting on photography's incapability to fulfil the inherent illusions of objective, faithful representation that have been cultivated and celebrated from the very first steps of the medium, the 'Herbaria Extracta' series meditates on the rarely contested validity of scientific practices through juxtaposing layers of traces, unintentional imprints and attempts at preservation - both scientific and photographic - through reproductive photographic copies, considered both diminishing, degrading and multiplying the original, yet also necessary measure for preservation and distribution.

Even though a charmingly nostalgic glimpse of past practices and objects, the work addresses the fragility and futility of the profound human drive to master reality through efforts of imposing control and order on the surrounding detectable world.

Toying with the entire concept of photographic 'light writing', positive and negative processes, and the history of the medium, these images of unintended imprints of reality reflect on the status of representations as mere traces.

Profoundly laced with the history of photography and science, the work quietly meditates not only on the abilities of any form of reproduction, classification, illustration or preservation to replicate any level of real experience but also on the inevitably transitory nature of most human endeavours.

Emilia Moisio (born Helsinki, Finland 1983) is a freelance photographer based in London working with private and corporate assignments and her personal art projects.

Her research-based art practice is guided by an interest in exploring and questioning the role and functions of images in society and our lives, and consists of distinct, concept based photographic projects strongly focused and founded on using images as a tool to examine, analyse, develop, and articulate structured frameworks of thought. Her work critically explores the social and cultural conventions of different areas of imaging and interpretation, and investigates the persistent role of the relatively inconspicuous, historical assumptions of the inherent photographic reliability, objectivity, evidentiality, and truthfulness. Particularly concerned with conceptually disrupting the easily assumed photographic transparency in our habitual interactions with images, her most recent major work is investigating the conventions of scientific imaging and their impact on our perceptions of reality.

She is the winner of the Troika Photography Award in 2015 and her art projects have been exhibited widely in photography and cross-media group exhibitions in UK and internationally, shortlisted for Source-Cord Prize 2014, published in Magenta Flash Forward 2015 and Silvershotz Folio 2012, and featured on LensCulture online gallery.