Jore Puusa portfolio ja cv: MY HISTORY

Some real history shot by me and.........some bad quality snapshots taken during my years as a war and crisis photographer for AP, UPI, EPU, AFP, etc via a couple of finnish agencies.

This picture is taken somewhere, about 1995 or 6 or 7?? But the athlete for sure is Zola Budd from South Africa, a woman who did run barefoot, no matter street or track. So we were shooting film and usually games were during night.
Had to use 400 ISO color negative or worse still 160 ISO slide. Those were cooked up to 1600 ISO and 640 ISO. Think shooting slide. First You took reading from Your colormeter and put some Kodak Wratten filters on Your lens. Then You started reading the Lunasix for exposure. If You were lucky You might use 1/250s. and Nikkor 180mm f 2,8. That was difficult and You had only 36 frames rolls. So You had to know how to shoot with manual focus and no image stabilization. Those were the days when cameras were iron and men steel, ( and prints noisy).

1988 Finland got it´s first Playboy centerfold girl. She was called Kata Kärkkainen then. Now she is a writer doing novels. But boy... were we young photographers about to fall in her feet? ( except me of course ;-) When ever we saw her partying, we went and asked for a photo opportunity. And she liked us and our polite manners, who would`nt. But that was it, no-one was lucky after pictures were taken. Just some smiles.

Russian aka Soviet Union attacked Finland two times during the second World War. Over 85 000 finnish men got killed when trying to save our land. Some families lost more than others. I have always felt bad at this grave in the city of Kuopio. Though I do not know the story, this grave of three brothers is situated in the graveyard of those heroes who died in WWII. My family had to leave their home in Carelia twice and burn also down twice the new buildings they just got right.

1986 a desperate and bankrupted man committed a bankrobbery in Jakomäki, Helsinki. He took three hostages and fled the bank with some money. The two hostages were young female clerks, who had to stay under a blanket several hundred kilometers with the robber who had a pile of dynamite in his lap.
They finally drove to a city called Mikkeli and the dynamite went off when a police officer -tired of following the runaway car- fired his gun and possibly hit the dynamite. Only the volunteered driver and the robber died in the blast cause the women got out from the getaway car during the last seconds. I took this last picture of the driver alive in Helsinki. He just did not know...:(
My colleague Heikki Saukkomaa got it all,--- the explosion and the women running to safety. A cool guy.

MEMOIRES DE MOI!