The high level of reflection to which painterly photography and photographic painting are now subject becomes vividly clear in Jorma Puranen's recent photo series „Icy Prospects". The motifs depicted here – we seem to recognize the sky, water, trees, a little church, a man with his back slightly turned – paint themselves. In „Icy Prospects" what is reflected in the black-painted surface can only be guessed at, remains enigmatic and many-layered. The traditionally wooden image carrier of panel painting shows irregularities and is not so thickly covered with black alkyd as to allow an even surface to emerge. The grain shows through. The structure of this „image carrier" is precisely captured. The „Icy Prospects" give one the sense of beholding the world – a no-man's-land, where the landscape is also sky – through a thick layer of ice. But their most striking impression is their closeness to painting.