“Down To The River, My Baby And I” — elderly people rooted in the Kemijoki Riverside with their river stories

The Kemijoki River in the Finnish Lapland was once the most important salmon river in Europe. When the Isohaara hydroelectric plant was completed in 1949, the salmon was lost, and many inhabitants of the riverbanks lost their farming and grazing lands. Instead, log floating – which had been the main way to transport timber since 1860s, continued in Kemijoki until 1991.

My visual essay conveys the tacit knowledge of the elderly residents of Alakemijoki who have lived almost all their lives by the riverside in three villages situated between two hydroelectric plants, Petäjäskoski (under construction 1953-57) and Valajaskoski (completed 1960). I photographed and interviewed people between the ages of 80 and 100 in seven households. They told me what Kemijoki has meant to them before and now. I summarise their memories in connection with black-and-white portrait photographs.