Pastureland

Pastureland (2024–) explores changes in our habitats through restoration of a traditional biotope using grazing animals. A traditional biotope is a habitat that has evolved through traditional agriculture and grazing such as a forest pasture, a grassland or a meadow. They were still abundant in Finland in the 1960s, but as people migrated to cities and the rural population declined, so did livestock farming. As a result, the pastures have eutrophicated and the traditional biotopes have radically reduced, which is affecting the diversity of our species.

Over the past years, Leinonen and her husband have been using sheep to graze the land surrounding their small farm in Eastern Finland. The landscape is slowly changing from a eutrophic land into an easily accessible forest and meadow it once was. Pastureland -series uses images of the landscape, botanical images of ordinary plants found on the pastureland and photographed in an empty cowshed and portraits of the sheep as visual elements to address the importance of restoration of these biotopes.