Finnish photographer Riitta Päiväläinen uses discarded clothing from second-hand shops and flea markets to carry silent, unknown stories and histories.  By freezing the garment or letting the wind fill it with air, she is able to create a sculptural space, which reminds her of its former user. Her installations blend seamlessly into their natural settings.

“The unavoidable fact that I will never know the actual story and personal histories connected with the clothes arouses my curiosity,” she says. “The clothes remain silent, withholding their secrets.”

Riitta Päiväläinen is on exhibit through April as part of   New Wave Finland: Contemporary Photography from the Helsinki School at Scandinavia House in New York.

Lyle Rexer recently gave a lecture at the Scandinavian House on a group of photographers only now starting to be exhibited here in the States, the Helsinki School, whose characteristics include a propensity for abstract experimentation and an ambition to determine how art relates to the rest of the world. Aligning them with the Bauhaus, Rexer contrasts their efforts with the depictive deadpan of notables from Düsseldorf Art Academy, i.e. Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, and the Bechers, as well as the representational proficiency of the F/64ers and Edward Weston. The ”denotative” or “expressive” approach intended as “an examination of reality and its forms,” he points out, “is the default setting for contemporary photography.” 

Rexer describes the aesthetic of the Helsinki School as maintaining a one-to-one relationship between photography and the real world.

“There are not many artists in the Helsinki School who have simply dispensed with the camera. And are appropriating images, are manipulating images, are fabricating other realities out of images. There is still a continuing commitment to the camera as a tool of expression and as a tool of knowledge—a way of knowing yourself and the world. And in that sense, you might say that the Helsinki School is conservative, not postmodern at all, and very much in the line with earlier photographic traditions, and in that sense a kind of ballast, or a kind of counterweight, to the sort of programs you see that are usually called conceptual. 

So I’m thinking about something called the ‘physcho-allegorical’ which is the way I think a lot of Helsinki photographers deal with the person. Not so much as a social being, but as a psychological and expressive being. And the kind of images you tend to get are ones that approach dreams, psychological states, allegories, telling a story about one thing by using images of something else.”

One of the Helsinki artists, Niko Luoma, who just a few weeks ago had a solo show at Bryce Wolkowitz called And Time Is Longer An Obstacle, enumerably aggregates a sliver of exposed light over a long period. This process creates nest-like intersections that appear as illuminated geometric contours. Rexer refers to Luoma’s creative process as a “harvesting of time” and contrasts such an approach, which is in line with previous investigators into the visual capacities of media like László Moholy-Nagy and Gottfried Jäger, with Henri-Cartier Bresson’s temporally charged decisive moment. 

For the Q&A I posed a question about the Pictures Generation and how their theories compare to those of the Helsinki School. Rexer’s response distinguishes between concepts affecting a photograph’s meaning and meanings derived from conceptualizations rooted in photographic form:

“They all question the status of the photograph in terms of the culture more broadly, they are interested in its transmission, its consumption, its distribution—all those things that lie outside the image—the desire that’s provoked by photographs, what is it that people bring to photography that makes them want those images—that’s their stock in trade. And it turns out they don’t all share the same attitudes toward photography, and their attitudes have changed over time.

I don’t see any of that in, or, very little of that in, the Helsinki School. There is still a commitment and an interest in the image as a cognitive experience, something you can learn from, that you can appreciate, that you can desire, that can tell you something about yourself and the world around you. And that kind of communicative photography—as a communicative and expressive form—strikes me as very much un-conceptual, very much un-postmodern. Where the concepts come in has to do with things like examining the nature and character of photography, how the processes work, what kind of impact do they have, how are photographs fabricated, what kind of philosophical issues are brought up when you’re making and look at a photograph—that’s the conceptual parts. And I think that’s very compelling.”

Then, when another attendee’s question led him again to the Pictures Generation, Rexer adds nuance to what the Hielsinki School omits, namely digital distribution, and predicts a resurgence of analog techniques.

“It seems to me even the most conservative photographic practices are coming to us now with quotation marks around them. There’s a kind of intense self-awareness in all of photography. So when I talk about the Helsinki School being conservative, that doesn’t mean that we’re talking about artists who are at all naive about the situation of photography. There are things we know about the world, and relationships with photographs of that world that we can’t unlearn. The Pictures Generation’s had a lot to do with that. They have acquainted us, just as Andy Warhol did, with the ‘scene’ underbelly of image culture.

And that’s not going to go away, we can’t will that away. You can’t pretend because you spend all your time in the darkroom that digital imaging is not going on constantly, sampling is not going on constantly, people are manipulating everything—and that’s ultimately got to have an impact. That will change what we desire about photographs and what we expect from them. My sense is that we’re going to see the desire for the analog image—that is, the thing that somehow relates to reality beyond it in some more intimate way, like skin—become more intensely desired. At the same time we’ll see the most extravagant deconstructions of precisely that kind of experience.”

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Breathing the Same Air by Nelli Palomäki
Text by:    Estelle af Malmborg, Pedter Michael Hornung
Foreword by:    Timothy Persons
Publisher:    Hatje Cantz
Publ. year:    2013
Language:    English
Pages:    136
Illustrations:    66 duotone

Exhibitions
- Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund
- The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki 2013

Does Kuopio ring any bells?

A smaller city on the east coast of Finland. Where we headed last year to experience ANTI – Contemporary art festival. Well, the city has certainly more attraction than the amusing art festival and the famous Finnish saunas. Namely — Nanna Hänninen.

She might be well recognized in her home country and some niches of the art world. However I just discovered her gripping work  — thanks to the information technology.

The latest work from the artist (2012)

Photos are taken from Nanna Hänninen website

Nanna Hänninen was born in 1973.  She lives and works in Kuopio. She studied at the Lahti Institute of Design, the Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung in Zürich and the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. Her work has been shown in several solo shows and numerous group exhibitions and are part of international institutional and private collections all over the world.

She belongs to the to the pioneering generation of Finnish art photographers known as the “Helsinki School” and has gained critical acclaim for re-thinking her medium of photography and abstract photographs.

Artist: Nanna Hänninen

Kuopio´s blog entries includes: 7 day drunk, Proclaimer, Analogies can make one feel at home, Back and forth and Remake, rebuild and renew.

Casia Bromberg investigates the meaning of intimacy for humankind today, and the isolation created by human individualism.

Born in 1984 in Sweden.

from Hasselblad Foundation

• http://www.casiabromberg.com/index.php?/photo/the-hairy-sisters/

• http://www.casiabrombergportrait.com/gallery/21408/the-tarantino-family/

Anni Leppälä is the 26th Young Artist of the Year. She lives and works in Helsinki. Leppälä (b. 1981 in Helsinki) is studying in the photography program, MA, of the University of Art and Design Helsinki. She held her first private exhibition in 2004 and has participated in collective exhibitions from 2001.“My interest towards photography is closely related to time in the past tense, to the possibility of being able to make a moment motionless, to make something stand still. That something has existed, and has now been set in static state.”from 591 photography blog

• Website
• Foam

“Elskar Fyr (High Tide)”

I want to narrate feelings like in novels. The reader of images gets a chance to handle her lost and encounters. There is a place for danger. Did you die when you saw the shadow of the bird?

Finnish photo artist Susanna Majuri is the storyteller of the North. In her pictures, her thoughts always return to Iceland, the land of her dreams. Majuri portrays people living not only in Iceland, but also in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, because to her mind, there’s a little bit of Iceland in every Nordic country.

The photographs resemble film stills lifted from the movie version of a fairy tale, or perhaps from a thriller, or a romance without a happy end. The many associations evoked demonstrate the enormous narrative potential that hallmarks her work, which is joined by a finely honed sense of composition and staging.

from Studio Online

• Helsinki School

vídeo:

• Meet the artist

Around or upside down, perspectives bounce and change

If only we were to let things follow their course

Controlling impulses one cannot contain

The contention of control

Liberty

Freeing colors, constraining forms

Fighting fears: letting go

I was on http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com and came across this image and immediately loved it. It’s so simple and well executed. I popped over to Wilma’s website to see the rest of the series but this image wasn’t on the site. The series itself is looking at childhood and memory, using made up experiences, memories from her childhood, experiences from adulthood which she layers together in her images alongside texts that talk about the memories and experiences the images have created from.

Wilma presents the texts before each image, which a lot of people would dislike as it sets up how you will view the image. I think it is done nicely in this series, the texts and images are brought together and take us along this new half true, half imagined story.

The only thing I would say would be that I don’t think the images are that strong without the texts and don’t always look how you would expect after reading the text. The images are beautiful but without the text I don’t know if I would spend that much time on them.

I especially liked Plan for a Fire, Plan for a Burglar as we all did this as children and I, for one, still do it as an adult:

There is something about the combination of wealth, social justice, harsh climate with a bit of loneliness which always lends such poetry to the arts coming from the North.

Having acquired such a taste, I must say I am always on the lookout for northern expressivity.

That’s how I came across the incredible work of Finnish photographer Riitta Päiväläinen:

Through pictures of old garments, she explores a subject that is very dear to me, that of untold stories.

In her own words:

The main theme and primary driving force of my work is my interest in old clothing. In my photographs, I use discarded clothes from second-hand shops and flea markets. I am interested in old garments, because they carry silent, unknown stories and histories. The unavoidable fact that I will never know the actual stories and personal histories connected with the clothes arouses my curiosity. The clothes remain silent withholding their secrets. Little by little, personal histories are absorbed into the collective history.

It is so mind-catching and stimulating to wonder about not only the origins of our possessions but also the history they carry with them.

Being an avid secondhand enthusiast, I dare say her Vestige series has forever changed the way I look at my belongings.

Being made to think always excites me.

I have the feeling it could be exciting.

If only I could keep my mind quiet for a bit.

Sudden shapes and subtle surfaces emerge quite surprisingly from the lenses of skilled photographers with a keen eye for beauty in buildings.

These are just a few of the reasons why I am attracted to the work of photographers like Ola Kolehmainen, another Finnish virtuoso from the Helsinki School.

Mystery of Light

A new take on things can be brought about when we are made to look at structures from different perspectives.

Composition with LA

Photography always puts me in a good mood.

Maybe it’s because I lived there when I was younger, so I probably get it in ways I may not even be aware of.

The first gallery I entered in New York housed an exhibition on Finnish photographers from the Helsinki School, an interesting art project engaged in promoting photography & video art from Finland. An idea that deserves not only to be praised but also copied all around the globe.

Two of the artists’ photographs featured at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery really caught my attention and interest. They are:

• Anni Leppälä:

Yearly Growth, 2009 from the Possibility of Constancy series

The use of darkness and clarity, both in the lighting as in the settings remind me instantly of this important duality in Nordic life and everything it represents to them: summer-winter, grey-color and so on.

• Susanna Majuri:

With fascinatingly pale colors and the ever present use of water, Majuri brings the unpredictability of shape into a static form of art such as photography.

Inspiring.

I came across this fantastic photography work of artist Susanna Majuri while roaming the web this morning.
Her work is part of Helsinki School’s “photography matters” exhibit that started yesterday and ends February 1st of next year at the StatoilHydro office in Oslo, Norway.

To see more, follow this link here…Susanna Majuri.

Ciao.

From the Series Seedlings, 2004. (buttons) 21 x 31,5cm, ed 5

(also 47 x 69cm, ed 4), chromogenic colorprint on aluminium.

My interest towards photography is closely related to time in the past tense, to the possibility of being able to make a moment motionless, to make something stand still. That something has existed, and has now been set in static state. There is a certain aspect of lost moments and a feeling of letting go when looking at photographs. They exist at the intersection of the momentary and the constant, between the fleeting feeling of being alive and consciousness of the moments passing by.

From the Series Seedlings, 2004. (landscape) 21 x 31,5cm ed. 5

(also 47 x 69cm ed. 4) chromogenic colorprint on aluminium.

In my pictures, attempts in recognising and lighting of obscure and vague movements, are made visible. I want to approach the momentariness of living through constancy. The paradox is that when you try to conserve or protect a moment by stopping it, by photographing it, you inevitably lose it at the same time. I am interested in exploring these contradictions and borderlines between things, how distance relates to closeness.

Symbolic meanings are essential in my works. I am interested in how the concrete surface of reality and photographs relate to metaphorical things that can be found underneath. I try to trace those kinds of occasions of seeing when words dissolve and scatter apart, objects and incidents intensify into symbolic language, silent information and intuitive interpretation. What fills the room behind the picture, allows one to step closer. Thoughts of incompleteness and insecurity are also important to my works.

Objects and spaces can occur to be like transparent routes between the inside and the outside, between the seen surface and unconscious content. Museums and miniature rooms become entrances to each other. Balance and its fragility, delicacy are present simultaneously.

How to stop a feeling, a memory? By binding it to visible objects, facades of material things, attaching it to a room´s walls, the surface of photographs. Like translucent skin with unforeseen memories beneath.

I suggest: we can be multiple. Touch your enviroment and it will show itself as fantastic. People are unpredictable. They are male and female at the same time. Eyes whisper sparks.

The water is the most remarkable. It carries bodies. Water is colour. The shimmer and the deep green. My challenge is to see the reality in a non-traditional light. When I am shooting pictures, I have a premonition that something strange is about to happen.

I follow the logic of colours, when I combine places, people and objects. To me the most important quality of photography is it´s capability to convey emotions.

I suggest: imagine the details a bit further. Who is drawing trees in to the pond. When you touch the surface of the house it turns out to be your companion.

I throw myself into a fictive reality in the shootings. My heart beats wildly when I can feel the presence of surprises. When you´re in love, but bid farewell to the channel. You forgot the ship and it sinks. When the fall is unreachable behind the grey sorrow.

I want to narrate feelings like in novels. The reader of images gets a chance to handle her lost and encounters. There is a place for danger. Did you die when you saw the shadow of the bird?

The language is a map and draws around us, unknown and familiar.

I believe in a single image. It breaths strong.