Henri Airo – Probable Cause – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

Henri Airo’s Probable Cause could be described as a photobook version of a TV true crime docudrama. It is an investigation into the hit and run death of his younger sister 14 years ago and it also serves to interrogate Finnish social mores surrounding alcohol, including heavy drinking while at work and driving while intoxicated.

Airo was motivated to do a project on his sister’s death when he read official reports from the time, which unsatisfyingly focused on technical details, while contemporary media coverage played up the story of his sister as innocent victim and the drunk driver as callous villain. The understanding he arrives at is presented in the book via staged images, documents, and police evidence photos. Airo also layers texts into the visuals – transcripts of witness interviews, media clips, captions, and a running first-person narration printed on smaller-dimensioned text page inserts scattered throughout the book.

The narrative is not linear. The texts move backwards and forwards in time. Authentic contemporary images are mixed with reconstructed scenes, and you end up not always knowing where you are or if you are looking at something that is “real” or not. It becomes its own fictional world in a way, and it gives you a thorough presentation of the situation from multiple perspectives, including the perpetrator’s.

It is worth listing the different voices we hear. We have Airo’s narrative, police evidence information, media clippings, and witnesses – a bus driver, a roofer, fast food workers, the perpetrator, his co-worker, and his wife. In terms of images we see landscapes – mostly urban scenes shot at night – a liquor store, a car repair shop, memorials at the crash scene, automobile debris from the accident, trial photos, and staged images of Airo speaking with police officers and witnesses, plus several photos of what must be Airo’s wife and infant child. An extensive dossier of research material, printed on lined graph paper, is included in a separate section at the end of the book.

Airo’s treatment of the perpetrator is not one-dimensional. It would have been easy to portray him as an unredeemable low-life loser, but instead we can see that in some ways he is also a victim. For starters, the apparent lax social attitude to intoxication blows my mind. This guy had multiple DUI convictions – six of them – but he was legally able to drive less than two years later. Casual, heavy drinking while at work (he was self-employed) is another eye-opener. Multiple people could have intervened when they saw him but they didn’t. In the research dossier there are clippings with quotes from public officials expressing sympathy and vague declarations about what should be done, but apparently not much has changed as a result.

Ouf. That’s not encouraging. I do not know much about Finland, but it seems like Probable Cause was probably made for a good cause!

Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

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Henri Airo – Probable Cause

Photographer: Henri Airo (born 1996; lives in Helsinki)

Language: English and Finnish

Text: Henri Airo

Design: Henri Airo, Camilla Marrese, Janne Riikonen

Printing: Jelgavas tipografija, Latvia

Silkscreened hardcover with dustcover; sewn binding; 69 photographs; 196 pages; 21 x 27.5 cm; ISBN: 978-91-987607-9-8

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