Sleazy

With this work of scanography, I portray kink culture and romance, rebelling against our lives saturated by pornography through a deliberately sleazy medium. I photographed everyday objects and fetish gear to create an evocative mixture of vulnerability, dominance, and intimacy. Finland remains a very traditional country — all sorts of quirks and kinks still feel somewhat taboo. It’s like a poorly kept secret everyone knows something about. My intent is not to educate or to shock, but to explore and display aspects of queer photography.

This collection originally began as a school art project but has evolved as I’ve been encouraged and inspired to continue developing it. I chose to use the scanner of an old home printer as my camera, appreciating how it fittingly restricted me as a photographer.

Jan-Axel Metsäluu (1998) is a photographer from Finland. Coming from a background in metal and construction work, he became interested in photography around two years ago, at the beginning of 2024, when he started studying at the Jyväskylä Education Consortium Gradia after several years of unemployment due to health issues.