Photography Auroral Synapse is the tricky title of a very beautiful book of photographs by Anna Hill of the aurora borealis in Finnish Lapland.
Hill travelled to Finland in 2003 with the purpose of interpreting the northern lights in a number of ways. Her installation of the northern lights, based on film, photography and sound, was at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2003.
Auroral Synapse has 14 photographs of the landscape, communities and shimmering night skies of the far north. Each one of them is a wonderfully compelling image: two deckchairs beside a fire on the ice of a frozen river; a school playground by night, looking weirdly sinister; stunning vast empty snowy landscapes; the aurora borealis and stars, edged with snow and fir trees. Hill has captured perfectly the clear, cold remoteness of the place. The original installation had a soundtrack, with recordings of radio frequencies and a specially commissioned song by Iarla O'Lionaird. The idea was to create "audible light". The book also contains a CD of these recordings, described as "a creative soundtrack". Frankly, the CD is superfluous to the striking and unusual book.
Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist and a writer
Auroral Synapse By Anna Hill Available at www.spacesynapse.com, €35 plus p&p
