Harri Pälviranta - Guns at Home 2004-2007

Harri Pälviranta is a Finnish photographer based out of Helsinki, he is currently working as a researcher at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. His projects are a cultural examination of Social communication, he describes his work as "My artistic practise is clearly photographic, and issues I touch upon are related to societal topics. Thematically my practise has been twofold: on the one hand majority of my work has discussed issues relating to violence (both in structural level and as concrete form of action), and on the other hand I have touched upon topics relating to male being and production of male identity"
see more of his projects at Harri Pälviranta

Below is his project Guns at Home 2004-2007 he describes this project as:

"There are guns in many Albanian homes, both guns ment for hunting purposes and illegal guns. Illegal guns are quite often Kalashnikovs. Reason for people having these illegal guns is in the revolt in 1997, when the people went to barricades and finally rushed into the weapon storages managed by the government robbing them empty. When situation calmed down the government asked the people to return the stolen weaponry. Some of the guns got returned, many of them stayed as a hidden property of the people and fair number of them were smuggled outside Albania. People having these weapons at home is unspoken common knowledge.

Originating to these happenings and being based in the earlier history it may be stated that Albanians have close relationship with guns. There are a lot of them out in the public as well.

Normal way of storing the weapons is having the actual gun in one place, the bullets in an another place and the magazin in the third place. This proves the guns are not ment for sudden use but rather for more serious cases."











all images © Harri Pälviranta