Ville Kansanen is a Finnish artist based in California. He works with photography, video, painting, installation- and land art.

The primary focus of his work is to treat the photograph as a unique metaphysical space with idiosyncratic properties of gravity, time, mass, and motion. Ville employs the traditions and techniques of photography, land– and installation art to create work that exists and functions within photographic space. Most of his work is made in the desert where geologic time is visible in the uninterrupted landscape; and where cultural memories of ancient religions remain tangible. It is within those conditions that Ville constructs his images, often from several exposures and over long spans of time. He returns to the same desolate locations year-after-year for weeks at a time. Living and working out of his work truck, he constructs installations from wood, boards, strings, ropes, native rocks- and soil. Often, he will revive and recycle materials from weathered installations, left on-site from previous months and years; eventually taking everything back and leaving no trace of his presence. Ville’s final intention is to use photography as a medium and a space to form an interactive relationship with the powers of Nature and the installations.

Ville’s work has been featured in several print and online publications such as American Photo Magazine, GUP Magazine, SFAQ and Diffusion Magazine. In 2015, he was awarded a Lucie Award, and has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums internationally.

Ville makes most of his work in the desert landscapes of the American West. He is self-taught.