Atelieri O. Haapala

Atelieri O. Haapala's photography exhibition revives portrait traditions that are over a hundred years old. The show offers nostalgia and extravagant costumes, the charm of the bourgeoisie, but also opium-fumed, decadent vices. The touring photographic studio has immortalized its clients in 19th-century spirit. The result is a fine collection of modern cabinet portraits.

Alongside the neo-Victorian portraits, the Finnish Museum of Photography's exhibition includes photographic apparatus that matches the spirit of the age, a hand-painted landscape backdrop, and other photographic props. All this, plus a suite of works about the life of the owner of the photographic studio Frau Onyxei Haapala and her faithful assistant Helmut, in which the working duo travel from the shores of the Arctic Ocean, via a pulmonary-tuberculosis sanatorium, to the pyramids of Giza.

Atelieri O. Haapala is a performative art project created collaboratively by two photographers, Saara Salmi and Marco Melander. Onyxei and Helmut are their role figures at photography events. The photographers, disguised in a false moustache and corsets, spent over a year appearing at Helsinki's Night of the Arts, burlesque events, art museums and vintage sales, and elsewhere. Clients have come to be photographed in their own clothes or in a manner more in tune with the spirit of the endeavour, in borrowed costumes. The idea of living out the parts and performing has been to give the public some of the atmosphere of a lost world, an imaginary moment in time, a moment when being photographed was a special and much-awaited event.

The project has been supported by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

Further information on the exhibition:
Chief curator Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger +358 9 6866 3628, +358 05 518 7619, anna-kaisa.rastenberger@fmp.fi 
Curator Tiina Rauhala, +358 9 6866 3622, tiina.rauhala@fmp.fi

Further information on workshops, guided tours and supplementary program
Educational curator Erja Salo, +358 9 6866 3620, erja.salo@fmp.fi 

The exhibition is accompanied by workshops for day-care centres and schools. Further details: www.valokuvataiteenmuseo.fi or Educational Curator Erja Salo, erja.salo@fmp.fi 
Further details about the project: www.ohaapala.com and info@ohaapala.com