Is it possible to communicate through photography about people in distress? Through this exposition we approach such issues as media imagery and image fatigue, photography of ‘the other’, the privileged position, significant encounters, and reciprocity. We also show how commitment to social issues may relate to such an artistic process as both starting point and outcome.

This exposition contemplates the collaboration between me, a photographer, and remote sensing researchers from the Department of Geoinformatics at Aalto University, in an ongoing artistic research collaboration called Ground Truth. Ground Truth is a photography project about ‘seeing something when there’s nothing there’.

This exposition takes a close look at the concepts of self-origination and mediation for a better understanding of the photographic image engendered by a flash of light and its natural radiation. Starting from my own artistic experiments with fulguric and cosmic rays, performed in cooperation with a lightning simulation lab in Oxfordshire (UK) and with the nuclear research centre CERN in Geneva (Switzerland), it puts forward a speculative approach that looks beyond static and traditional assumptions about what it entails to 'be photographic'.