Past exhibitions

There are wonders and beauty all around us, but do we really see it? City Wonders: Helsinki by Lorenzo Servi (alias SerraGlia) is a photo-series of objects, colours, shapes, and parts of the urban landscape that normally go unnoticed. Each image carries a story, revealing the unexpected in everyday life in Helsinki.

The American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) created a world of intimate and emotional pictures during her intensive life – prior to her death at only 22.

For many Finnish youths, confirmation means the ending ritual to confirmation classes – a rite of passage, which is symbolized in the confirmation picture. Tanja Konstenius’ video installation, comprised of portraits in motion, examines how a young person's transition happens in front of the camera, how portraiture becomes a manifesto for change, and how gender roles are performed in a rite of passage.

Starting in the 1960s, the Finnish rural landscape changed dramatically. Photographer Kaius Hedenström (1943–2006) had, in his work as a press photographer, observed how new buildings were erected in rural yards and villages. The photographs in the Maaseutumme tänään (Today's countryside) series underscore the severity and violence of the change in the landscape.

The Mythical Journey explores the thousands-of-years-old relationship between animals and humans. It seeks to capture an ice-age hunter's experience of nature and animals. Humanity's oldest known works of art – cave paintings and rock art – have served as a point of departure for the works in the exhibition. Acting as guides are bears, elk, wild reindeer, the now-extinct aurochs, mammoths, and wild horses.

It is difficult today to speak of a cohesive Nordic art scene, or national scenes for that matter. Nordic Delights is an attempt to break the homogeneity. The artists included in the exhibition all live and work in the Nordic countries yet most of them have their roots elsewhere. This time it is the so-called minorities who are in the majority.

Marta Zgierska survived a serious car accident in 2013. Post is a project about trauma, frozen in silence and tension. Everyone can find their own punctures here – exhausting dreams, fears, obsessions. An individual way of discovering a twin traumatic memory in another person.

A gas stove, a refrigerator, meat and coffee every day. The advertising images of the Pietinen photographic studio from the 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s present exclusive new products that are a self-evident part of everyday life today.

Food is not just a simple, basic commodity used to satisfy hunger. This year, the Festival of Political Photography will present images that highlight the political, social and environmental dimensions of food.

In the spring of 2016, the Finnish Museum of Photography, in cooperation with the study programme of museology at the University of Helsinki and the Festival of Political Photography, implemented a project that collected photographs by asylum seekers who had recently arrived in Finland, as well as memories and stories related to these photographs.

Elis Hoffman photographed the series Fading in small rural towns around Sweden during five summers in 2010–2014. He travelled to places he had never been to, meeting people he had not met before. Hoffman captured these encounters in photographs that depict tenderness and vulnerability, expressing the photographer’s sincere curiosity towards life.

Images of urbanisation, industrialisation and the emergence of consumer culture and the welfare state – the familiar 20th century story of the upheavals of Finnish society. This time, however, the vantage point is that of the working class. We see work and workers move from villages to cities, from…

An American photographer, Magnum photojournalist, Instagrammer and self-publisher – Alec Soth (b. 1969) is one of the most talked about photographers of the 2010s. The exhibition Gathered Leaves brings together the four major works that brought Soth to the forefront worldwide. 

What makes a good food photograph? You need soft, natural light, raw materials or a plate of food, a little composition and a steady hand. And to view the food, a lens, which nowadays most often means a mobile phone or a tablet. This was the basis for our cooking and photography course. The course…

While living in the United States in 1980–1981, Pirkko Tanttu (b. 1946) carried her camera with her wherever she went. She photographed often and in large quantities, striving to capture fleeting moments of the hustle and bustle of city life. The majority of the pictures were taken in Philadelphia, where Tanttu lived with her partner, and in New York during their numerous trips to the city.

Finnish design had its heyday in the 1950s. Successful designers had a trusted go-to photography partner in Finland: the Pietinen family business and, in particular, the brothers Otso and Matti Pietinen. They were the ones who took photographs of the internationally recognised designs by, for example, Timo Sarpaneva, Tapio Wirkkala, Nanny Still, Kaj Franck and Saara Hopea.

In Andrey Bogush's (born in 1987) photographic installations, the materiality of the photographs is part of both the digital and the physical space. Bogush records his own life by taking fragmentary diary snapshots. He processes the photographs using photo-editing software – adding elements and unnatural colours, and blurring decisive moments – which serves to disrupt the representational nature of the photographs.

A group of nursing home residents, along with their loved ones, share stories and pictures of their personally significant places. Places of Life are locations where a person has experienced something joyful or exhilarating, something truly memorable.

The photographic artist Taneli Eskola's (b. 1958) work weaves a tapestry of space and time – images of snowy landscapes, street life, gardens and urban havens. Eskola has always observed his immediate living environments, including the Hämeenlinna of the 1980s and the old Malmi district in Helsinki. During his travels, he has captured scenes in the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Poland and Italy.

Why do the words ”home” and ”land” sound and feel good, but ”homeland” refers to something restricted, nationalistic, and even prejudiced? What are nationalistic feelings all about? “Homeland” is the theme of the 2016 Festival of Political Photography. During the festival, the theme will be…

For 18 months, Kaisa Rautaheimo has photographed men in their 20s going "through a phase": some have dropped out of education, others have never started their studies. Working life seems distant. The boys hope to find something meaningful, but they don’t know where to look for it, what to look for, and why.Rautaheimo wanted to look at these men as individuals, to hear their voices and see their everyday personal lives.

Pimiö – Darkroom, lets the viewers to immerse themselves in the fascinating reality of the darkroom – experientially, through all their senses. The exhibition looks both at the history of photography and the current buzz around darkrooms and traditional techniques. Works by more than 60 photographers, spanning from the 19th century to 2015, demonstrate the versatility of the techniques and the changing ideals of photographic printing.

From coffee mugs with cute cat photos to t-shirts with holiday snapshots: applying photographs to everyday objects is so common that the phenomenon is often left unnoticed. In a brand-new series of photographs, the Swiss-Danish artist duo PUTPUT brings these photographic objects to new, insightful…

Secret Agent is a group exhibition composed from the viewpoint of feminist authorship and forms of collaboration in contemporary photography and film making practices. The six artists in the exhibition actively challenge the institutional structure of history and patriarchal authority – and imagine alternative narratives through the specificity of lens-based media.

The retrospective exhibition on Hannele Rantala (b.1952), The End of the Wonderful Times, will comprise works dating between 1975 and 2015 and will offer a comprehensive overview of Rantala's 40-year career as an artist. Many of the works in the exhibition are having their debut showing in Finland.

In the exhibition Reinterpreting the Frame, new artworks are shown together with their inspirational origins. The roots of these works by five young Finnish artists go back to old archival images from the Museum’s collections.

A photographic artist, researcher, photojournalist, teacher, and developer of artistic research – the extensive influence of Leena Saraste (born 1942) on Finnish photography cannot be overstated.

The first exhibition of the festival of political photography (PVF) will present series from seven photographers from around the world who all want to make statements about social issues they find important. Most of the series are being shown in Finland for the first time.

Family Album features a series of family portraits with children from divorced families. The main character of each photograph is a child whose parents have divorced. The children have invited everyone they feel belongs to their family to join in the portrait. They have also arranged the family members as they have seen fit.

The series In the Playroom brutally shows that it is hard to build a protective bubble around children. Hobin's works often deal with the darker aspects of childhood and incorporate references to cinema, history or popular culture. Children act out September 11 and re-enact the Abu-Ghraib torture scene, as publicised by the media. A little girl, wearing a plastic tiara, sits, with knees bleeding, in front of a boy, dressed as a reporter.

The Internet has fundamentally changed photography. Never in history have people created so many photographs to such vast and immediate audiences as today. Never before has the individual snapshot taken by ordinary men and women had such global political impacts. Photographs have become integral in…

Everyday routines, what are they? Clipping our nails, brushing our teeth, and eating are things we constantly do, but seldom think about.