• Interviews
  • Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Videos
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About
  • Write for us
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Privacy policy
Pellicola Magazine
Pellicola Magazine
  • Interviews
  • Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Videos
  • Submit
  • About us
  • Article

Simon Kerola: young talent in a 50’s soul

  • 18/10/2017
  • 2 minute read

Simon Kerola

When you crash into Kerola’s work you would believe he is a 40 years old photographer based in the U.S.A., a nostalgic man of the Ektachrome film colours. Instead, Kerola is only 19 years old and he lives in Sweden.  Grow up in the suburb outside Stockholm as only child, Simon spent most of the time of his childhood alone. That’s when he started to create a new character and he gave himself a new identity: Johnny Keethon. He says “Johnny” is a real badass name and quite mysterious, whilst Keethon comes from a written text he found in the livingroom of an abandoned house where he used to spend a lot of time, the text said “Keethon died here”, those kinds of things that happen in the movies. When Simon wasn’t playing Johnny Keethon he spent time with his mom, she is artist and initiated him to the artistic environment. To keep him busy when he was with her she used to give him disposable cameras and that was the first introduction to photography.

When he 15 years old he started taking pictures more seriously. Simon felt this impetus of creativity and he was sure that photography was the right way to express it. He used to watch Bud Spencer and Terence Hill films and he used to pause certain frames to study them, analyzing the way they were dressed, the surroundings, the atmosphere. Soon, he started to reproduce that world using other subjects. That style was also contaminated by jazz music and beat literature. However, what influenced his photography the most is that he is an only child, a detail that he included in his biography. Be an only child means rely only on yourself and have none to play with, an experience which brought that melancholia that we find in his photos. He says “I like abandoned places when they are timeless and have a story to tell. Walking through these environments creates a lot of feelings and becomes a place where only you decide where and who you are. Not a very happy place but still very beautiful”.  In the future he wants to enhance the narrative theme in his pictures, head towards a cinematographic storytelling and change his gear to be completely analog, he says “it feels more real when I shoot film”. If you feel nostalgic of the 50’s, if you like a cinematographic style, if you saw Ektachrome film and you loved it, you must know Simon Kerola or his double Johnny Keethon and you will forget that he is just a teen.

Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola
Simon Kerola

All images © Simon Kerola

Written by Anna Trifirò

Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 4
Previous Article
Niklas Porter
  • Interview

Interview with Niklas Porter

  • 12/10/2017
read more
Next Article
Louis Dazy
  • Interview

Interview with Louis Dazy

  • 23/10/2017
read more
You May Also Like
Chloe Milos Azzopardi
read more
  • Article

Chloé Milos Azzopardi’s drawing of a metamorphic system of things

  • Claudia Bigongiari
  • 01/02/2023
read more
  • Article

Lindsay Godin’s future outer space system

  • Claudia Bigongiari
  • 22/09/2022
Angelo Vignali - How to Raise a Hand
read more
  • Article

A sculpture of memory and identity in Angelo Vignali’s visual short circuits

  • Anna Bulgarelli
  • 24/06/2022
Chiara Ernandes - Still Birth
read more
  • Article

Chiara Ernandes: A Contradictory Birth

  • Claudia Bigongiari
  • 06/04/2022
Antonio Miucci - Arcadia
read more
  • Article

Antonio Miucci’s Arcadia reclaims otherness as a space of awareness and affirmation

  • Gaia Amorello
  • 16/03/2022
Marina Caneve - Entre Chien et Loup
read more
  • Article

Between fragments and stratifications: Marina Caneve’s gaze on place identity.

  • Anna Bulgarelli
  • 02/03/2022
Davide Degano - Sclavanie
read more
  • Article

The complexity of border areas in Davide Degano’s photographs

  • Michela Coslovich
  • 16/02/2022
Wiosna Van Bon - Family Stranger
read more
  • Article

The destructuring of stigma in Wiosna Van Bon’s social practice

  • Nikola Lorenzin
  • 09/02/2022

Subscribe now to our newsletter

  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Contact
  • About
  • Write for us
  • Privacy policy

Input your search keywords and press Enter.