Dark Atlas - Perttu Saksa's Portfolio

The abstract photos in the Dark Atlas series represent energy – self-made gasoline, "Kpayo", sold in the countries above Nigeria, on the street, hand-to-hand, one canister and a bottle at a time.

On the tables in the small gasoline stalls, the bottles waiting in line to be sold are encased in a mud shell in order to protect the contents from direct sunlight. At night, the flickering flame of an oil lamp glows through the precipitous ocher content of the bottles, providing material for the imagination, giving you a sense of aerial maps, uncharted realities and unnamed places. The round bottles glow in the dark of night like planets, in a tangible manifestation of an energy that is otherwise abstract and unattainable. A picture of the ongoing environmental catastrophe and its fuels; victims and oils that feed, lubricate and prepare us for a future that is beyond our imagination.

The work portrays the reality of the energy industry as a contract not unlike religious devotion, in which oil, an essence hidden within the earth, and weaved into the fabric of society, reflects our existence and becomes individual and visible. The real and tangible omnipresence of energy provides a perspective on our dependence on energy – which is possible and requires, to be reorganized.