Kai Fagerstrom - House in the Woods

The gloomy atmosphere of desolation is what attracted Kai Fagerstrom to the old abandoned houses not far from his dacha in the Finnish town of Suomusjärvi. Looking through broken windows and wide crevices of wooden doors, an amateur photographer noticed small footprints: mice, badgers, squirrels, foxes and other furry trespassers settled here when people left their homes. “Stepping into these houses, it's like going back many years – the past still breathes here in every corner,” says 49-year-old Kai, parish manager in the city of Salo. “And you know: there is something comforting in the fact that nature is regaining places that were once given to people for temporary use.”

(Total 12 photos)

Source: Journal/prophotos-ru

1. In an abandoned village in the Finnish outback, life is in full swing. When people left, animals settled in their houses.

2. A fox peeps out of a cat hole in the wall of a dilapidated barn

3. On a summer night, a family of badgers makes their way to the kitchen in single file through their personal tunnel that opens into the fireplace. It took Fagerstrom four years to capture the shy nocturnal animals on film. For this shot, he set up the camera on a windowsill and stood on the stairs outside the window for several hours, waiting to press the shutter with the remote control.

4. As a rule, Kai Fagerstrom imagines the image he wants to get in advance and then plans the shoot. He sets the camera at the perfect angle, throws nuts as bait, and waits for the animals to wander into the frame. “Sometimes I get lucky, but more often the whole night goes by,” says the photographer. Kai is also forced to adjust his equipment to natural light so as not to scare away the animals with a flash. It took him several days to capture a dog looking at a bank vole.

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6. But it happens that a good shot is pure coincidence. Once, a pygmy owl flew through a broken window, taking Fagerstrom by surprise: “He looked at me and stamped his paw, as if to say: go away, this is my house!” Kai recalls.

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9. It took him several days to capture this squirrel peeking out from behind the door.

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12. For ten years now, upon arrival at the dacha, Kai Fagerstrom has been visiting his wild neighbors, and at the same time taking pictures of unusual "dacha residents", including this red squirrel. The result of Kai's work was the book "House in the Woods", published in Finnish, German and English.