More on: self-portrait

I was only twenty, driven by a dreamy conviction that life would unfold exactly the way I wanted. Others told me I floated through the world. This they said with a mixture of pity and scorn. I didn’t know what they meant; I’m still not sure I do.

I cut a hole in the ice each winter, an extraordinary black trapezoid—“avanto” in Finnish—intended for the bracing plunge to follow the extreme heat of the Finnish sauna. The shape carries so much personal meaning.