Hukkuneet (The Drowned)

The Mediterranean Sea is the largest mass grave in Europe. Over 30.000 people have perished while attempting to cross the sea.
Hukkuneet (The Drowned) tells the story, in words and images, of those lost while crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the traces they left. The book follows in their footsteps in Italy, Greece and Spain. It gives a voice to people whose line of work or place of residence puts them in touch with the dead. The photographs are of personal objects, graves, shipwrecks, the sea, that which remains when the persons themselves are gone.
The cover of the book extends for 20 pages. It consists of a list of deaths of people on their way to Europe. The listings are collected from the small news articles in the international media by the NGO United for Intercultural Action. Each listing has a date, number of deaths, name(s) (if known), cause of death and place.
We decided to use the List of Deaths in the cover to make both, the sheer volume of deaths, as well as the individuality of each death, visible to the reader. The reader has to make a decision of either skipping these pages or reading them in order to reach the actual start of the book. The chosen visualization is also meant to provoke associations of newspapers, as well as inscriptions of memorial sites.