Photographer, anthropologist, story-teller, traveller - I have my hands in a few different pies. I'm a passionate photographer and love shooting our beautiful planet, its diverse inhabitants, and human made things. I especially enjoy telling stories to help bridge the gaps between peoples' ideas about reality - be it through the written word or through images - to bring us all a bit closer to one another.
I relish being in movement, discovering new lands, cultures, and ways of thinking. I speak a mixture of Finnish, French, English, and German and suffer from an incurable passion towards languages and humanity in all its shapes and forms.
The name leiju is a composite of my family name, Leijola, and my first name, Julia. You could call it my artist name, if you were to call me an artist. As it so happens, leiju means something in Finnish: leijua is a verb which can be translated as hover, float in air, and waft. Without the -a at the end, leiju is the second-person singular present imperative form of leijua, which fits me quite well as I have a tendency to drift around this world, endlessly looking for new points of views to the problems we, humans, face.