All Things Anchoress Of The Brazier’s Grotto
My name is Katriina Etholén and I come from Finland. I have been a freelance journalist, and that’s what it still says on my income-tax card. I started to contribute to newspapers and magazines in 1982, and during my career I have contributed to nearly 20 newspapers and magazines varying from photo magazine to football magazine, cat magazine to water magazine. I worked as a full-time freelancer since 2001.
Since my work chances are very limited nowadays (so many changes in magazines or papers I used to write to) I started thinking about continuing writing online as a hobby. And nowadays I do this full-time, without payment, basically just to fill my days and publish stuff that I am interested in as well as get my photographic work published, too. I became interested in photography in the early 1980’s after seeing works of Magnum photographers and a book American Pictures by Jacob Holdt. I have shown my photos in many group and solo exhibitions and I very often illustrated my articles with my own shots.
One of my main areas as a journalist during the last twenty years besides photography (I was a contributor to a biggest Finnish photo magazine from the 80s) were industrial heritage and historical masterpieces of civil engineering, and thus I cover these areas here on my blog, republishing some of my old articles (now in English) and writing totally new ones. My long-time Tolkkinen pulp mill project will progress little by little and publishing stuff on my blog helps me to make it happen one day, doing a small photographic book(let) about the place.
Music has been an important part of my life since my teenage years. I have also written about bands every now and again for papers, even though it was never my main area. I worked some time in a second hand record shop and finally graduated from Turku University in 1996 with my master’s thesis dealing with the stage behaviour and image of rock artist and theatrical rock productions. From 1991 all the way until 2005 I also worked as a stage hand in big concerts. I was also a record collector, but in the turn of the new Millennium I started getting rid of my collection and little by little I drifted away from music world until I came back in the spring 2015. From the very beginning a camera followed me to the gigs. In the spring 2018 my first photo book about my friend’s band was released. Music, photography and writing – it means lots music related stories.
I love cemeteries, medical history, gin (even though I cannot drink it as it causes me migraine, but I found a way how to deal with it) and books. I love books. I love books also as physical objects.
Basically I write about all kinds of things that interest me. What else… I support West Ham United and FC St. Pauli.
Facebook pages for this blog, photography and a cellulose factory project (in Finnish).
Twitter and Instagram.
Big thanks to Andrew Marland, who helped me to get the blog started!
Tales From The Brazier's Grotto 