Past exhibitions

In One Picture Manifesto, photographers Marja Pirilä (b. 1957), Harri Pälviranta (b. 1971), Maija Annikki Savolainen (b. 1980) and Maija Tammi (b. 1985) challenge their own ways of creating art as well as photographic practices in general. In the exhibition, each artist presents one independent…

The exhibition hovers between reality and fiction and uses the techniques of contemporary photographic art to examine the way in which we cling to one another and the world, dream, create utopias, and imagine the future.

P. O. Jansson (1920–2019) was a professional photographer and photography enthusiast who took photos throughout his life. He particularly enjoyed taking photos of nature in the archipelago and of those closest to him, such as his family and his sister Tove Jansson.

The exhibition asks who is unseen, particularly in the West, and considers how difference is confronted through forms of visual representation.

This is Violet Sea. Here, works by artist Hertta Kiiski (b. 1973) from the last ten years are brought together with new works and a new exhibition space. Their energies are ready to meet your energy. Girls, animals of other species, rocks and time take the center stage.   Hertta Kiiski…

Fluvial is a meditation on the beaches and villages of inland Portugal.

In this exhibition, Photofuss, the youth group of Finnish Museum of Photography, presents thoughts on things that are undergoing change.

The 2019 Festival of Political Photography explores the capacity for collective imagination and the potential for action. The festival highlights photography projects that deal with smaller and larger changes, as well as alternative mindsets and lifestyles.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the building stock of Helsinki was modernised, as old buildings were frantically torn down to give way to new ones. For a period of two years, the photographer Matti Koivumäki (born 1950) spent time exploring his childhood home district and documented the Puu-Vallila area of wooden buildings, which was threatened with being condemned due to changes in town planning. The photographs in the exhibition are original gelatin silver prints from the years 1974–1976. The exhibition is on view at museum's collection corner Kuvakulma.

The work of the artist duo Iiris Kaarlehto and Inka Kynkäänniemi focuses on structures and manifestations of power that are created and reinforced through a variety of stories and everyday practices, and their deconstruction. These themes take on a visual form in their newly completed video artwork…

Slow Art Moment Exhibition encourages to look art slowly. So give a moment to the art work, breathe deeply, sit down and relax.

Marja Helander, Harri Pälviranta and Kari Soinio are three long-time photographic artists. The exhibition Inherited Ideals delves into the values and norms upheld and promoted by the media, modern society and our own spiritual heritage. Each artist examines the ideals that guide us from their own point of view, in addition to confronting the challenges related to dismantling the tacit rules: can we do anything to the forces that define us? And what are the things that we are completely blind to in our own environment?

The Photobooks from Finland association has conceived an exhibition and a photobook, both based on doing things collectively. Eight artists were selected for the project in the spring of 2018. The thematic starting point was the Finnish landscape.

How did the civil war look like for a young female photographer in Helsinki in 1918? Tyyne Böök had a popular photographic studio in a worker’s district to the north of the Pitkäsilta bridge. Elsa Sillman was a medical student and an amateur photographer. When the war erupted, both women grabbed their cameras.

Swedish photographer JH Engström (b. 1969) is known for his personal photographic series, in which he has expressively documented himself and those around him. The exhibition at the Finnish Museum of Photography is, to date, the broadest sample of JH Engström’s artistic production, with photographs from 1991 to 2017.

Äimärautio is a community that revolves around a deep passion and commitment to horses. In her series of photographs, shot in Oulu, Finland, Kati Leinonen examines the relationship between horses and humans.

Each winter, the sky in Rome is the stage for mesmerizing
 murmurations of millions of starling birds. Swirling and ever shape-shifting liquid-like clouds are formed by a myriad of tiny black dots, moving like one single being. AUSPICIA is a work about the impossibility of control and man's futile and unremitting attempts at exerting it. The exhibition is on view at museum's Project Space.

Erica Nyholm’s works deal with family relationships, often between mothers, daughters and siblings. They explore the family dynamic from a woman’s perspective. In her works, families appear as units that run according to their own rules, in which we grow into individuals, mirroring ourselves off the other family members.

The works by the French artist Noémie Goudal (born 1984) play tricks on perception and make the viewer doubt their own senses. Where are the boundaries between the imagined, the natural and the human-made?

In his art, Ian Waelder examines skateboard and youth culture and their forms of reproducibility through film, photography or sound. In this exhibition, none of the images on view are originally taken by Waelder, but are reframings and edits of images taken from films, magazines and books that are influential in the skateboarding culture.

For 10 years, photographer Heidi Piiroinen and journalist, author Kimmo Oksanen have been following the life of Romanian Mihaela Stoica and her family and siblings in Finland, Romania, Greece, Estonia and France. Through the personal story of Mihaela, the exhibition deals with larger societal issues and the phenomenon of Romanian people leaving their homes and becoming street beggars in Western Europe.

In Miia Autio's works, portraits of Tanzanian youths have been converted into negatives, in which the original colours become their opposites. Bright spots appear as shadows, and dark spots as light. Three works of the series are on view at the museum's collection corner Kuvakulma.

What does your everyday life feel like: the morning rush-hour or a sleep-in in the morning, lunch at the canteen or a quickly grabbed ready meal from the shop? In 2016, ten photographers documented everyday Finnish life, each from their own personal point of view. The starting point was to comment on the increasing inequality in Finnish society. People may find some of the stories captured in the images easy to relate to, while others may be more remote.

Everyday life is repetitive; it does not go away. It's there again tomorrow, not going anywhere. Everyday life is often grey and dull. Everyday life is just everyday life. It’s the alarm clock ringing. It’s running to catch the bus; it’s homework, friends, playing games... It’s everything you want it to be. The exhibition by our museum's friendship class in Vuoniitty Comprehensive School examines the everyday life of a 7th-grader. The exhibition is on view at museum's Process Space.

Photofuss, the youth group of The Finnish Museum of Photography, presents photographic material from a holiday spent in everyday life. The exhibition is on view at the museum's Process Space.

Bright Hours refers to something past – an uncertain place that does not exist, something fragile and indefinite. The project is based on Karl Henrik Edlund's journeys to the Arctic North and northwest Russia in 2008–2013. The series also contains photographs from Edlund's everyday life in Saint Petersburg and the Åland islands.

The photographic artist Andrei Lajunen (1969–1999) considered the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's works On Certainty and Remarks on Colour to be some of the most important influences behind his artistic thinking and practice. The set of works, on view at our museum's collection corner Kuvakulma, was created during Lajunen's first years of study at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. NB! Exhibition closed Wed, Jan 24 – Sun, Jan 28.

The exhibition celebrates the hundred-year history of photographic abstraction. With over 100 works, the exhibition presents a large number of Finnish artists from different periods, as well as the famous international early abstractionists László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and August Strindberg.

A communal photo exhibition asks how Finland has changed during its independence. The contrasting old and new photographs taken in the same location have been collected from hundreds of Finnish people who took part in the Time Travellers photo campaign.

The exhibition Rose by Sofia Okkonen is a photographic foreplay and profile of a woman. It presents a woman isolated in a studio, posing for a camera. The model is like an amateur actor, who gets the script just as she arrives in front of the casting directors.  

Jari Silomäki’s series of photographs, Rehearsals for Adulthood, is a story about a young man, his love interest, and the pain he experiences in this relationship. The series from the museum's collections is on view at Collection corner Kuvakulma.

How can old photographs help young people to understand historical phenomena? Seven different teaching groups have sought new ways to take advantage of the museum's open materials, using a variety of tools and techniques.