The Source of my Sadness
By Jaakko Saari
3 Apr 2008
I was adopted when I was two years old. My biological mother is an artist, and the time she had me, her life situation wasn't so good. I've never met my biological father. So my grandma took care of me most of the time until I got adopted into a new family.
They are farmers, living far away from the big city.
The new surroundings were a safe hideaway for an abandoned kid like me. It became my home and soon I forgot the existence of my biological roots. I did know it was there, but I didn't care. I was just happy.
A landscape with a lake, fresh forest and fields that looked so endless, almost stretching into nothingness. My father drove a tractor that looked gigantic.
I was happy. And especially now that some time has passed, I really think so. My new parents and sister really took care of me, much better than my biological parents ever could do.
The picture of my father describes my feelings about my family, he is a clever man with always work in his hands.
When my parents realized I didn't do so well in school, they just kept supporting me on my way in to this artistic career. They were always there to listen me.
After all, people who are adopted always end up analyzing everything and asking the most difficult kind of questions. The questions which has no answers. But when I discovered my new hideaway in South East Asia, meeting the new people and new culture, I noticed it healed the wounded in me.
In Japan, for a first time, I didn't have to analyze. I was just fine as I was, and world was good.
So I ended up traveling back and forth constantly. Always when I returned to my home from Japan, I felt somehow fresh. I don't mean only the change in weather. I thought I brought something with me, maybe.
During those years, I wore out the shutter of my compact camera shooting in Japan.
Now, I've given up analyzing, but I try experience the source of my sadness and confronting my own identity through these photos.
