Temporal Dialogues in Finnish Landscape Photography
Taneli Eskola, J. G. Granö, Erkki Mikkola, Jorma Puranen and Pentti Sammallahti
The Gallen-Kallela Museum
24.11.2007-24.2.2008
Boundary Crossings is an exhibition presenting the "national landscape" of Finland from an unconventional perspective. The exhibits, photographs by two scientists and three photographic artists, portray the broad vistas of Northern Eurasia and their people. A dialogue of time and place is provided not only by the perceptions of geography and photography but also by cultural boundary crossings. What links the landscapes of the Skolt Sami with those of Tuva in Central Asia? Why do the geographic landscape photographs of the early 20th century appear to be topical today?
Contemporary art has become interested in the same themes of location, locality and regionality that geographers have studied. Pentti Sammallahti has followed the same paths in the Sajan Mountains that J. G. Granö did during his famous expeditions. Jorma Puranen has pursued an internationally notable career in photographing the same landscapes of the northern regions that Erkki Mikkola photographed as a geologist. Although the landscapes of the exhibition are far from the metropolises of culture, these outlying regions have recently drawn increasing attention. Not only borders and states but also cultural values have changed greatly over the past century. Atmosphere and artistic interpretation are shared by the landscapes photographed at different times.
Boundary Crossings comes to the Gallen-Kallela Museum from its tour of Minnesota, Seattle and Toronto.
The showing at Tarvaspää includes views of Northern Finland photographed by the geologist Erkki Mikkola in the 1920s and 1930s. Mikkola was an early user of the panorama camera and has remained little known as a photographer. He took photographs for J. G. Granö's book Suomen maantieteelliset alueet (The Geographical Regions of Finland), among other works, and published a book of photographs of the Kuusamo region in Northeast Finland.
This exhibition continues the Gallen-Kallela Museum's popular series on classic photographers, which has previously featured the works of I. K. Inha and Arno-Rafael Minkkinen, among others.
The exhibition is curated by Taneli Eskola.
