Old Helsinki: this image, taken in the Esplanadi park more than 150 years ago, shows the old theatre building, which was demolished in the 1850s. Photo: Helsinki City Museum / CC BY-ND 4.0.

Hidden in plain sight in Sven Hirn’s Kameran edestä ja takaa – valokuvaus ja valokuvaajat Suomessa 1839-1870 (‘Behind the camera and in front of it – photographs and photographers in Finland 1839-1870’), published more than 40 years ago, the image shows four men standing in front to the theatre designed by Carl Ludvig Engel in 1827 (and demolished when it became too small to accommodate the city’s enthusiastic theatre-going public in the 1850s). Unusually, in those days of slow shutter speeds, the photograph shows people, among them Carl Robert Mannerheim, father of the Marshal Mannerheim who was to lead Finland’s defence forces in the Second World War (third from left).

Among the other photographs published by Helsingin Sanomat are some images of Helsinki decked out in garlands awaiting the arrival of Tsar Alexander II to the capital of his autonomous grand duchy of Finland in July 1863.

Other mid-century images show central Helsinki looking not unlike its present-day self. It’s only when the camera ventures outside the few blocks of the city centre that the view becomes more unfamiliar, the streets lined with one- and two-storey wooden houses.

Most intriguing of all, however is a sequence of eighteen photographs taken in 1866 by one Eugen Hoffers from the top of Helsinki Cathedral. Helsingin Sanomat has linked them into a panorama with views of Suomenlinna fortress, the new Russian Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral, Books from Finland’s old publisher Helsinki University Library, and the burgeoning city beyond.

Imperial welcome: Helsinki is bedecked with flowers to welcome Tsar Alexander II on 28 July 1863. Photo: Helsinki City Museum / CC BY-ND 4.0.

Pomp and circumstance: elaborate floral tributes for the visit of Tsar Alexander II in  1863. Photo: Helsinki City Museum / CC BY-ND 4.0.

New and old: the recently completed Uspenski Cathedral is surrounded by a shanty-town of tumbledown cottages in this image from 1868.  Photo: Hoffers Eugen, Helsinki City Museum / CC BY-ND 4.0.

Strange and familiar: this picture, from 1865, shows the Cathedral, the Senate and the University Library surrounded by low wooden buildings and unbuilt land. Photo: Helsinki City Museum / CC BY-ND 4.0.

City of wood: beyond the familiar buildings of the few blocks of the then city centre, in this image from the 1860s, lie streets of modest one- and two-storey wooden houses. Photo: Gustaf Edvard Hultin , Helsinki City Museum / CC BY-ND 4.0.

A soldier playing his accordion. Photo: SA-kuva

Between 1939 and 1944 Finland fought not one, but three separate wars – the Winter War (1939-45), the Continuation War (1941-44) and the Lapland War (1944-45).

We have become used to black-and-white images of the conflict, with their distancing effect. Among the 160,000 images in the Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive, however, are some 800 rare colour photographs from the Continuation War, which bring the realities of fighting much closer. The events pictured leap out of history and into the present.

The large numbers of photographs of guns and aircraft will be of primary interest to military historians, professional and amateur; but among them are images which bring home the political realities – the victory parade for the short-lived recapture of Viipuri in 1941, for example, or a photograph of Field Marshall Mannerheim, the Finnish leader, shaking hands with Adolf Hitler on a visit to Germany in 1942, marking Finland’s co-operation with German forces in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Continuation War.

Inevitably, however, some of the most affecting images are not of fighting but of the ordinary life that continued through the conflict. Warming a sauna; soldiers’ washing hung out to dry in an eastern forest; a private on the front reading a letter from home: Russian women chopping firewood; army pack-reindeer in their saddles; and a soldier, little more than a boy, far from home, playing his accordion.

The victory parade for the short-lived recapture of Viipuri in 1941. Photo: SA-kuva

Soldiers’ washing hung out to dry in an eastern forest. Photo: SA-kuva

Russian women chopping firewood. Photo: SA-kuva

Members of the women’s defence corps  pause for coffee by the lakeside. Photo: SA-kuva

Off-duty. Photo: SA-kuva

A private on the front reading a letter from home. Photo: SA-kuva

A woman air defence officer photographed on the Lahdenpohja air surveillance tower. Photo: SA-kuva

Warming a sauna. Photo: SA-kuva

This book is a journal of a ‘survival project’: a continuous kayak voyage of 1,300 kilometres along the Finnish coast, from the eastern border (Russia) to the northwestern one (Sweden). Pekka Lassila (born 1959) is a photojournalist who, in an attempt to find a way out of the crisis of losing a job he had heald for thirty years, set off on his voyage in May, when the ice had only just melted. Nights were spent mostly in a tent; all washing up had to be done with sea water. Lassila blogged daily for newspapers by the power of his solar-charged phone and tablet. This solitary endeavour seems slightly obsessive at first – but the stories about the geography and history of the places passed by and the descriptions of the personal daily marine routines turn out to be interesting, never repetitive. The shallow west coast, the Gulf of Finland, even proves to be dangerous: the waves, growing rough, threaten to crush the kayak on the rocks, but Lassila’s paddling skills and luck save him. The photographs, taken each day, illustrate the voyage well (even though it is irritating that there are no captions!). Reaching his goal, after 31 days, Lassila manages to complete his ‘project’ – but confesses that he may only later fully understand the reasons why he set out.

After initially qualifying as an analytical chemist, Brotherus was then at the beginning of her career as a photographer. Everything lay before her, and she charted her French experience in a series of characteristically melancholy, subjective images.

Twelve years on, she revisited the same places, photographing them, and herself, again. The images in the resulting book, 12 ans après / 12 vuotta myöhemmin / 12 years later (Sémiosquare, 2015) are accompanied by a short story by the writer Riikka Ala-Harja, who moved to France a little later than Brotherus.

In the event, neither woman’s life took root in France. The book represents a personal coming-to-terms with the evaporation of youthful dreams, a mourning for lost time and broken relationships, a level and unselfpitying gaze at the passage of time: ‘Life has not been what I hoped for. Soon it will be time to accept it and mourn for the dreams that will never come true. Mourn for the lost time, my young self, who no longer exists.’

1999 Mr Cheval’s nose

10 years later

When I am seven I get a head.

I sit as a model for many weeks. The sculptor lives at school; I sit for my portrait at her house. Sometimes I am allowed to fetch books from the school library and leaf through them. The sculptor has a big, light-filled home. She does not have a husband or children; she has time for my head.

I sit opposite the sculptor, swinging my legs.

Three hours later my dad picks me up in our rust-red Saab 96. We sit alongside each other; we don’t talk.

Dad never locks his car.

A month later, the sculptor says the head is ready.

We go to see it, the whole family.

The concrete sculpture is exactly the size of my head.

The expression is serious but not sorrowful.

The sculptor wraps the head in towels. She says we can keep the towels.

Dad puts the head carefully into the Saab’s boot.

I am grey. I am seven.

At home, the head is placed on top of the dresser.

When I tell her I am moving to France, my mother gives the sculpture to me.

The concrete head weighs ten kilos. I am thirty-seven years old; my head is thirty.

I recline the back seat of my Saab 900 and stuff the luggage space full of clothes and dishes. I shove books and plates under the front seat. I wrap the concrete head in a towel and put it in a basket my mother has given me. I pack the Saab I have inherited from my dead father full of all the stuff that will fit into it. I fill the last spaces with knickers and socks.

I transport the concrete head across Europe. My right foot goes dead on the gas pedal, every now and then I have to wiggle it. Fields and intersections flash by. I have stockpiled nuts in the glove compartment, it is the beginning of September, schoolchildren have been kidnapped in Beslan, Europe is hot. I gulp water from a bottle. I stop at petrol stations for the toilet and to fill up. I wolf down the kilometres, push through the dark. I do not want to leave the Saab outside a -hotel. If someone were to steal the car now, I would lose all of my carefully chosen possessions.

In the dark, I cross the French border and by midnight I am in Normandy.

The streets are deserted.

My man meets me in front of a high cedar hedge.

We unload the car straight away. We laugh.

I lift the concrete head from its basket and place it in an empty space on the bookshelf.

GAME

I try to hit the shuttlecock so that the other player can’t return it. Some can’t. I have become a member of the badminton society and am permitted to play with any of its members. I know my numbers from the Eurovision Song Contest. My feet move swiftly over the hall floor, I am in rhythm. I leap high, hitting to the very left of the court. The city police chief tries to return the ball, but he can’t reach. The point is mine. I smile. We don’t need to speak.

I bump into the police chief on the town hall hill. I greet him. A chance badminton club’s opponent has given me the first person I can say hello to. I am delighted. I have come to the town hall to apply for a social security card. I need it. I am expecting a child.

STRAWBERRY

I am standing among people. I have been invited to a party, even though the only guest I know is my husband. I understand nothing of the rapid talk. I try to nod in the right places.
During the night, strange words circulate in my head. I get up and write them down on a piece of paper. I go to the bathroom to drink water. I knock a cough medicine bottle off the shelf under the mirror and into the toilet. The glass bottle shatters and a brown liquid spreads on the white porcelain. I do not have the energy to clear it up; I will deal with the mess in the morning. I lie on my bed. My head weighs a ton.

In the morning I look at the words I have written down on the piece of paper. There are not many of them. I need more words, I need them badly, only then can I open my mouth.

How can I learn to pronounce the words right?

How can I learn to speak fast enough for anyone to want to listen to me?

I tidy up the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I pronounce words with exaggerated expression. No one hears how superbly I can speak a foreign language.

Some mornings speaking is more difficult, sometimes it is easier.

The strawberries rot in the bowl. In the morning I cycle over to the market. I tell the stall-holder that she has sold me strawberries that only lasted two hours before they rotted. I say that I am not a tourist. Maybe the woman will understand that after this it is not worth selling me old strawberries or give me the wrong change as she does to those she suspects are English, the ones who will leave the harbour by ship the same evening.

I live here.

2012 Room Nr 10 (yellow door)

CHILD

As soon as I take the baby in my arms, my mother tongue shoots out of my mouth like a bullet. I begin to speak my own language to my child.
The child cries a lot, she is red and wrinkly and I do not know how to look after a baby. I stay awake. The concrete head gazes down from the bookshelf. With the child in my arms, I walk in the living room, beside the cedar hedge, on the sandy beach.

TOILET

The toilet gets blocked. I ring the handyman. He says that the roots of the cedar hedge have penetrated the pipes and blocked them. I know the handyman. A month earlier I asked him to change the bathroom mirror. I had thrown my sneaker at the mirror. I was aiming at my husband. The fragments clinked to the floor.

The handyman suggests I claim the toilet repairs on the insurance.

The handyman says that insurance is for crises.

A month later we get the money from the insurance.

But the crisis goes on. The child speaks and walks, you can already explain a lot of things to her, but not this. I can’t explain it even to myself, not in any language.

The mirror is unbroken and the pipes unblocked.

I stand in front of the mirror.

For the first time I notice that I have some grey hairs.

1999 Reflection

RETURN

I wrap the concrete head in two towels and set it -carefully in its basket. Dad’s old Saab is full to the gunwales. I stuff naked Barbies into the last spaces. The bottom of the car has rusted in the rain and the damp wind. I fear that the Saab will not make it to Finland. The man from the garage next door inspects the car, but does not promise anything.
The pear tree I received as a fortieth birthday present stays in the green fields of Normandy.

On Whitsunday I set off, driving to the north-east.

I fetch the child later, most precious of all.

I drive the same route back, but the road looks different, as if it had changed in seven years. From time to time there is fog on the road, but I only take a wrong turning once. I sleep in a motel, I don’t care any more if someone breaks into the car.

Just before the German harbour I take a turning into the forest and drive to a sandy beach. I unwrap one of the towels from the concrete head and go for a swim. The towel is soft, it wipes the salty sea water from my skin.

In the car-ferry cabin I look at my temples.

I decide to start colouring the grey away.

When I drive off the ferry at Vuosaari, a mangy fox runs along the hard shoulder.

CEDAR HEDGE

I walk toward my former home. The linden trees of the Boulevard de France have not grown since I last saw them. They have been well disciplined, branches have been trimmed every year so that they will not block the car-drivers’ line of vision.
I have not been to the house for three years. I have not been invited.

Now I have been.

I have reached the cedar hedge.

I ring the doorbell.

The door opens.

My child stands, smiling, between her father and her grandfather.

I kiss grandfather on the cheeks. He fought in Algeria. At our last Christmas, he showed me his army cap. He still has a soldier’s bearing. He is smiling. He was smiling ten years ago when we were introduced.

Grandmother comes from the kitchen, her apron round her waist, and greets me.

She is just as beautiful as before.

The living-room rugs look the same as they did, as if no one had walked on them since the child and I left.

The painting I nailed to the wall still hangs behind the sofa.

Everything looks the same as before.

I sit next to grandmother and eagerly tuck in to scallops fried in butter. We talk about the rainy weather and the unusual cold. The scallops are excellent. Grandmother has two ways of frying scallops; today she has chosen the one I like better.

The pear tree has grown at least half a metre.

We laugh about it together.

We laugh when the child says she supports France in football and Finland in ice hockey.

Outside, the wind blows.

We talk about pleasant things. The apple cake is soft.

It is time to go. Grandfather helps me on with my coat. The child waves from the door between her father and her grandmother. She will sleep one more night in her French home and return to Finland with me tomorrow.

We have got used to travelling.

I walk. The pavement’s asphalt is completely fractured; it’s bumpier than it was. The linden trees’ roots push at the surface and break the asphalt, and a new layer of asphalt lasts no more than a moment.

It begins to rain.

The rain washes the road clean.

This is my path, this is the way I go.

Before bedtime I brush my teeth in front of the hotel mirror.

My expression is serious, but it is not sorrowful.

I am grey, I am concrete, I am forty-seven.

2012 Emotional exercises V

Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Many of the scenes are so little changed that it’s a shock to see them peopled with behatted gentlemen and ladies in long skirts. Commissioned for Finland’s first travel guide, the photographs show the handsome buildings, parks and seafronts of a solidly bourgeois looking city that is still the capital of a Russian province, an autonomous Grand Duchy actively fostering the dream of independence that is to be realised nine years later, in 1917.

Student Union Building on Itäinen Heikinkatu (now Mannerheimintie). I.K. Inha, 1908.

Boys at Hietalahti harbour. I.K. Inha, 1908.

Aho & Soldan: Helsinki 1950-luvun väreissä / Helsingfors in 1950-talets färger / Helsinki in 1950’s colours

The photographer Claire Aho (born 1925) is the granddaughter of the author and journalist Juhani Aho (1861–1921) and his artist wife Venny Soldan-Brofeldt. Two of Aho’s sons, Heikki and Björn, became photographers and documentary film producers, founding the company Aho & Soldan. In the 1940s Heikki’s daughter Claire began to work for Aho & Soldan and becme a well-known fashion photographer. She also began photographing her native Helsinki; in 1952 she was assigned to film the Helsinki Summer Olympics. She continued her collaboration with Pathé News until the early 1960s. Colour came, literally, into the picture after the war; the photographs in this book feature life in the 1950s Helsinki. The photographs in their gently faded colours of the still small city, its inhabitants, parks, buildings and monuments are taken by either the two brothers or Claire Aho – in their time they were all signed just by Aho & Soldan. In his essay journalist Eino Leino portrays life in the city that he remembers from his own childhood in the post-war era, which to today’s reader appears sweetly idyllic, somehow optimistic and peaceful; the city has changed greatly – and yet stayed the same.

Speaking House #12, 2006. Photo: Marja PIrilä

A camera obscura (‘darkened room’) is the optical device that made photography possible; it is a box – or a room – with a hole in one side. Photographer Marja Pirilä has been using this method as a tool for almost 20 years. The book Carried by Light spans more than 30 years of her photography.

In the book artist and researcher Jyrki Siukonen notes in his essay ‘Eyes and Cameras’ that ‘in photographing spaces Pirilä also depicts people. The dreams continue on the walls of the empty building, as if after the people the house had become like them and were dreaming the dreams itself.’

Photographs and text extracts from Carried by Light by Marja Pirilä (Musta Taide, 2014)

Interior/Exterior: Lalla, Rouen, France, 2007. Photo: Marja Pirilä

My idea in embarking on a project entitled ‘Interior/Exterior’ was a nocturnal inspiration: in a room converted into a camera obscura I could capture an image of a person and at the same time that person’s room and the view from the window – what an all-encompassing method by which to photograph a person’s living environment!

Interior/Exterior: Otto, Tampere, Finland, 2002. Photo: Marja Pirilä

The originally documentary idea soon expanded in a new direction. The pictures began to form not only a person’s living environment but also to constitute an excursion into the mental landscape: reflections of memories, reveries, fears and dreams.

Working on this series was for me like taking photographs for a family album: visitations to people and also to myself.

To take the pictures I transform people’s rooms into camera obscura by covering the windows of the room with blackout plastic and placing on top the hole cut in it a simple convex lens.

Then the view outside the window is reflected upside down into the room forming a dreamy layered space. This and the occupant of the room I then photographed with a conventional camera.

In 2004 I came upon a large building which had stood vacant for 15 years – a former mental hospital. Its densely coloured walls, having seen better days, and having been used for colour therapy, became ever more remarkable when filled with upside-down images from the world outside.

Speaking House #3, 2006. Photo: Marja Pirilä

Interior/exterior:: Eero, Tampere, 2013. Photo: Marja Pirilä

I photographed the series ‘Speaking House’ in the period 2004–2006. The times of day and the seasons changed and in that building the light always had something different to say.

Working there was light meditation as the sun went round the building and the earth went round the sun. The exposure times were long, as much as an hour, as at that time I was still using film.

I began photographing the Milavida mansion in Tampere in 2011. The buiilding, currently known as Näsilinna. Had been standing empty for years.

As I worked long days in the deserted silence of the house, its spaces began to exude its varied and wild history. In the rooms which I transformed into camera obscura it felt as if present and past were engaged in a constant dialogue.

The pictures of ‘Milavida’ recorded transitional spaces, doors, thresholds and doorways which reflected my feeling in the face of a change in life and the unknown and my love of light and its capriciousness.

Milavida #14, Tampere, 2013. Photo: Marja Pirilä

Marja Pirilä: Carried by Light. English translations: Virginia Mattila. Helsinki: Musta Taide 3/2014, Aalto Photo Books. ISBN 978-952-292-010-2

Roe deer, Sweden. Photo: Mats Andersson

A day in the life of an elk, of a lynx? Nature photographers venture into the depths of forests, in pursuit of the inhabitants – predator and prey, mythical and real. Photographs from Kohtaamisia (‘Encounters’), by Mats Andersson and Heikki Willamo, text by Willamo (Maahenki & Musta Taide [Black Art], 2014)

The feelings in our dreams. They well from depths – from those layers of awareness that the mind does not shackle. In sleep we handle and organise the events of our lives in a way which is impossible when awake, when we are conscious of ourselves and our limitations. That is why animals can come into my dreams as friends, equal partners, like me, and therefore I so often dream of having their abilities and skills.

When awake we think all the time. We think about past events and worry about the future or dream of something better. Very seldom do we live in the moment.  Photographs are passing moments, often only a thousandth of a second long, but sometimes lasting minutes or even hours. In finished photographs the beholder can see much more – he adds his memories or dreams of the future. The picture-taking moment vanishes, something else comes in its stead.

According to our understanding only our closest related species can be aware of the past and the future, the others live in the present. What kind of dreams do they see? What does our dog dream of when its feet whip in a frenzy and weak barks follow one after another? Is it chasing a deer of which it earlier had the scent, or is it herdind reindeer, directed by its inherited instincts? It is difficult to believe that it is merely a question of reflexes.

Elk, Finland. Photo: Heikki Willamo

I have closely watched the sleep of an elk and a fox. Their ears move, but I don’t know whether they then are really asleep, or merely resting with their eyes closed. Perhaps they hear sounds through their sleep, and with their ears check that nothing will surprise them. Perhaps they also can smell, eyesight is not that important for them.

I have also closely watched elks [Alces alces] lying down, ruminating. An hour passed, a second and a third one as well, and the animals just remained lying down. During those hours my thoughts roamed I don’t know where. They stopped only sometimes for a moment. Then I watched the elk, felt it close to me, and enjoyed what I was experiencing. Then the thoughts again escaped into the future. Questions and plans filled my head. When are the elk going to stand up? What happens next?

The elk just existed. They hardly felt bored, because existing is a major part of their lives. And further, they did valuable work, ruminating the morning’s meal, chewing it still one more time to catch all its energy.

The animal is deep in man. During our entire existence it has been important to observe other species as potential prey, dangerous predators, to read the events in the environment or to learn. Many an important invention has been made observing animals and studying their special characteristics – animals form a solid part of the development of our species.

We harbour a wish to observe animals. A wish to understand and to watch admiringly, to make pictures. Man has made pictures of animals for over thirty millennia. Painted, carved, hammered, sculptured, modelled…. In caves, on rocks, in clay, in bones and horns, in trees, in hides, in his own skin…. Pictures that stem from great respect and from the animals’ symbolic meaning in our life.

Bear, Finland. Photo: Mats Andersson

The first picture-makers were hunter-gatherers. Their apprehension of nature was animistic. They believed that everything had a soul or spirit; they did not lift themselves above the rest of nature. The hunting communities were dependent on the animals living in their surroundings, and the hunter’s attitude towards game was personal. It required mutuality and a certain treatment of the animals, both before killing them and afterwards. One had to secure the reproduction, rebirth and sufficiency of game through sacrifices and ritualistic treatment of prey. There were also taboos, forbidden words and a certain vocabulary connected with game during the hunt.

Animals were also tightly woven into the hunting communities’ spiritual world, and the hunter was able to keep contact with them both in sleep and when in trance. Thus he maintained a deep and personal relation to the game, of which every one was for him an individual. Such a close and deep relation with the nature that surrounds us is strange in today’s world, but I recognise something very close in it.

Fox cubs, Finland. Photo: Heikki Willamo

Some years ago I followed the growth of some fox-cubs for a couple of summer months. The cubs became close to me, they did not fear me at all. I was able to watch their daily life: the gradual expansion of their living space, their playing and their rest. After some weeks one of them died. I found it lying on its side on a cliff, as if it had only lain down for a while to rest. There were no external signs; disease had apparently taken it.

I have seen a lot of death in nature, and I hold it as a totally natural end of life. But now the deceased was one of the familiar fox-cubs. Death came close; a sudden ending of a young life. I wondered how the other cubs had reacted to the lifeless sibling, and how the mother. The fox hardly understands death, but something irregular it has to experience beside the dead family member.

Crane, Sweden. Photo: Mats Andersson

I concentrated on the living and continued my association long into the summer. I laughed many a laugh, and experienced many wistful moments, when my own children’s early years came into my mind. We all have the same beginning. At first we hover around our mothers’ skirts, then we start exploring the world touching, smelling, tasting. The territory expands with the courage, for some more slowly, for others more rapidly. The journeys get longer, independence grows, and finally we break away totally. We become independent adults – men or foxes.

If one wants to encounter someone, one has to think of the individual. Not as a representative of the species, but just that individual with whom one stands face to face. At the same time one knows that one always also sees something species-specific. Four fox-cubs, four individuals: the bully, the brave, the timid and the fourth, which did not have time to show its character. Together they formed a total picture of a fox.

I have always liked the darker half of the day, and owls are deep in my mindscape. The soft whistle of the Pygmy Owl in a dusky forest, the – winnowing of the Boreal Owl in a moonlit spring night, the wild weddings of the Eagle-Owls in their cliff-castles – these are all experiences that leave their mark somewhere deep inside.

Because I know of the owls’ long history in man’s mind, or is it the other way around? They have always had their place, because they have something that appeals to us. Sounds in the night, round faces with eyes looking straight ahead – just like ours.

In the cave of Des Trois Frères in France there is also a carving [c. 25,000 years old] of a mystical mixed shape, with human feet and reproduction organs, the tail of a wolf, front paws of a predator, horns an ears of a giant elk, and an owl’s face with round, staring eyes. It might picture a shaman and his ability to take the shapes of his helpers on his spiritual journeys. Or perhaps it tells of a mythic beginning of time, when man and animals were one and the same.

In any case those ancient pictures in the caves tell of the owls’ importance in the ancient hunters´ understanding of the world, which perhaps originally lifted animals above man. That understanding of the world has dominated man’s mind for a long time, has changed only gradually in the flow of time, until the wheel of development some millennia ago started turning at an ever-increasing pace. History, which we possess, as people more or less unchanged, stretches over tens of thousands of years. It cannot have disappeared without leaving traces.

Science works to open our eyes. New amazing knowledge abounds in every field, but myths stay alive at the bottom of our minds. The spirits of nature and old mythologies have been replaced almost everywhere, but the majority of the world’s population still believes in the supernatural. Ancient sacred pictures have been changed to symbols of new religions, old rites and sacrifices to modern ones.

Lynx, FInland. Photo: Heikki WIllamo

The seven stars of the Big Dipper shine in the northern sky as part of the Ursa Major stellar formation. Cassiopeia forms the horns of the heavenly elk. The Milky Way is full of mythical animals. The Eagle-owl blows in the night – once, twice. The female replies with a gruesome squall from somewhere in the middle of some black firs.

The night is loaded with myths. Knowledge must make way for a moment.

Kohtaamisia (‘Encounters’), Maahenki Oy & Musta Taide, 2014. ISBN 978-952-301-015-4. Translation: Hans von Hertzen, Deilina Bishop
Mats Andersson is a Swedish photographer, Willamo lives in Finland. Inquiries / the English- and Swedish-language edition: heikki.willamo@kolumbus.fi

Click ‘Google street view’ (Google Maps) down left, for a bigger view. (Kuvan tiedot gives details of Brander’s photo, in Finnish only.) The old photos are from the Helsinki City Museum archives.

Brander (1869–1942) was hired by Helsinki City Council’s Board of Antiquities to record the fast-growing city for almost seven years between 1907 and 1913.

The southernmost photo on the map shows the barren Ursin rocks on the seashore, with Hernesaari (‘Pea island’) in the background. Today, as the Google shot shows, there is a park and a monument for seafarers, particularly those who lost their lives at sea.

Helsinki life and buildings as they existed a hundred years ago are portrayed in these calm shots of a small town going about its business. Signe did a very good job in her capacity as official photographer.

Fårö, Gotland, Sweden. Photo: Lauri Rotko

The Baltic Sea, surrounded by nine countries, is small, shallow – and polluted. The condition of the sea should concern every citizen on its shores. The photographers Jukka Rapo and Lauri Rotko set out in 2010 to record their views of the sea, resulting in the book See the Baltic Sea / Katso Itämerta (Musta Taide / Aalto ARTS Books, 2013). What is endangered can and must be protected, is their message; the photos have innumerable stories to tell

We packed our van for the first photo shooting trip in early May, 2010. The plan was to make a photography book about the Baltic Sea. We wanted to present the Baltic Sea free of old clichés.

No unspoiled scenic landscapes, cute marine animals, or praise for the bracing archipelago. We were looking for compelling pictures of a sea fallen ill from the actions of man. We were looking for honesty.

Gulf of Finland, Tilgu, Estonia. Photo: Jukka Rapo

We weren’t searching for endangered biotopes or species in the sea. We are photographers, not biologists. While photographing, we were not only looking at the sea, but also looking into ourselves and the relationship between people and sea. Jukka went underwater, Lauri stayed on the shore.

Liepaja, Latvia. Photo: Lauri Rotko

It was important for both of us tho show the Baltic Sea as it is today: barren, monotonous, overgrown, murky.

Our marine landscapes are different from those shown on television’s nature programmes. And yet, under the right conditions, the Baltic Sea can still possess a bewildering clarity and beauty, like a memory of the past. Decades ago you could still see the seabed ten metres below surface.

When we drove around the Baltic Sea in 2010, towing a boat behind our van, we thought the project would take roughly a year. Instead, it took three.

The journey required endless hours sitting in the van, looking for lodging, looking for shores, looking for places to launch the boat, looking for the overall direction of the project, and enduring gas stations, bad food, and fatique. Gradually, our bond with the sea grew deeper.

Turja, Saaremaa, Gulf of Riga, Estonia. Photo: Lauri Rotko

For Lauri, the most impressive moments were during long-exposure shots. ‘The shutter was open, light was painting a picture, haste was gone for a moment, and I stood silently before the sea. It felt like the sea could speak.’

Jukka has been diving in the Baltic Sea for twenty years. ‘I’ve always felt strongly attached to the sea. I feel free when I’m diving, as if I’m part of the sea.’

Bastvik, Nauvo, Archipelago sea. Photo: Lauri Rotko

The purpose of this book is to encourage people to stop and think about the situation of the Baltic Sea. In the end, it’s about each of us taking responsibility for the future of the sea.

We believe the Baltic sea can be saved.

Sventoji, Lithuania. Photo: Lauri Rotko

According to Senior Research Scientist Seppo Knuuttila, interviewed in the book by Susan Villa, the main problems in the Baltic Sea are widely thought to be eutrophication – the most visible sign of which is the blue-green algae, a result of excessive nutrient loading during the past century – and hazardous substances. The increasing sea transport of oil and chemicals is a growing threat. Coastal states must finally be required to report emissions extensively and reliably. There has, however, also been positive development: the overall status of the sea has no longer been weakening during recent years. Knuuttila says: ‘The Baltic Sea is not yet lost, but we must change the way it is treated. Ultimately, it’s about our entire lifestyle and consumer habits, which are currently not sustainable for the Baltic Sea – or for the whole planet, for that matter.’

Jukka Rapo & Lauri Rotko
See the Baltic Sea / Katso Itämerta
Helsinki: Musta Taide & Aalto ARTS Books, 2013. 192 pp., ill.
English translations: Ari-Joonas Pitkänen
ISBN 978-952-292-007-2

Map: HELCOM  (Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission – Helsinki Commission: the governing body of the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area)

1) Bothnian Bay, 2) Bothnian Sea, 3) Archipelago Sea, 4) Åland Sea, 5) Gulf of Finland, 6) Northern Baltic Proper, 7) Western Gotland Basin, 8) Eastern Gotland Basin, 9) Gulf of Riga, 10) Gdansk Basin, 11) Bornholm Basin, 12) Arkona Basin, 13) Kattegat, 14) Belt Sea, 15) The Sound

Into the city: Vilhonkatu Street, leading to the National Theatre and the Railway Station. Photo: Signe Brander, 1907. Helsinki City Museum / Finna

Photographer Signe Brander (1869–1942) was hired by the Helsinki City Council’s Board of Antiquities to record the fast-growing city for almost seven years between 1907 and 1913.

Signe was not keen on working indoors, so she must have been pleased to be able to get out into the streets. She chose to capture lively views of the town with people – passers-by, animals, children, flaneurs, people on errands (even though portraits were not her cup of tea either), in all seasons.

Brander’s thoroughly professional work can now be downloaded on the Internet: all of her 906 photos of Helsinki and its citizens a hundred years ago are available from Finna.

The National Digital Library – and its public interface Finna – project aims to ensure that electronic materials of Finnish culture and science are managed with a high standard, are easily accessed and securely preserved well into the future.

Unfortunately Signe Brander was not able to rest peacefully on her laurels. As her eyesight and health deteriorated, she was hospitalised in 1941. Then the war broke out, and when the patients were transferred to a mental hospital outside Helsinki, more than a hundred of them tragically died of hunger in 1942, Brander among them.

Rock around the clock in Helsinki, too! All photos here from Rasvaletti; photographer unknown, 1958

Rasvaletti. Valokuvia 1950-luvun Helsingistä /
Fotografier från 1950-talets Helsingfors
[Hair-grease. Photographs from 1950s Helsinki]
Työryhmä [working group]: Yki Hytönen, Tuomas Myrén, Riitta Pakarinen, Aki Pohjankyrö, Hilkka Vallisaari
Helsinki: Helsingin kaupunginmuseo, Helsinki City Museum,
2013. 211 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-952-272-499-1
€45, hardback

Onnen aika? Valoja ja varjoja 1950-luvulla
[Time of happiness? Light and shadow in the 1950s]
Toimittaneet [Ed. by]: Kirsi-Maria Hytönen & Keijo Rantanen
Jyväskylä: Atena, 2013. 249 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-951-796-924-6
38€, hardback

The 1950s rocked! They literally did – that is when the world got rhythm: Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis and the film Blackboard Jungle, with Bill Haley’s hit Rock Around the Clock, for example.

The development of new sound reproduction – long-playing records and tape recorders – was essential to the spreading of the gospel of rock and pop here, there and everywhere.

In Finland, the shocking new music was a smash hit among a group of young urban men called lättähatut, flathats, who also wore tight trousers, black overcoats and pointed shoes. Their girls dressed in angora sweaters and tight trousers or skirts. These teenagers, who hung around together very late in the evenings, were largely considered not only a nuisance but also a possible danger to the peaceful development of society (not only in Finland…).

Catching the rays: this swimmer has dipped herself in icy water and pretends it’s time to get a tan. A sunny winter day in Helsinki, 1952. Photo: Väinö Kannisto

The war was over; after chaos order was highly valued, which must be one of the reasons why young people were so widely frowned upon for being radically different from their parents, for breaking the – still strict – rules of behaviour and appearances.

Interest in and nostalgia for this colourful decade has grown recently, in Finland, at least. Two new books were published last year. Rasvaletti is the title of both a book and an extremely popular photographic exhibition at the Helsinki City Museum, opened last autumn.

Suburban idyll? Children looking over the newly built suburb of Maunula in Helsinki. Photo: Hulkkonen, 1957–58

This city is full of people who were young in the 1950s, and taking a trip down memory lane to one’s early decades breeds pleasurable nostalgia.

The photographs present the reader with a wealth of views of the city and its inhabitants at work and at play, confirming the fact that after the war Helsinki was chock-full of children and teenagers. New suburbs popped up like mushrooms.

A general feeling of joie de vivre comes across in the photographs, many of them colour images seasoned with the pastel hues of the time.

The articles in Onnen aika? set out to look beyond those pastels. Life was not just about increasing creature comforts, blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll. When the decade began, only five years had passed since the end of the Second World War: more than 90,000 men had died, more than 200,000 wounded. More than 100,000 evacuee families needed homes. War reparations to the Soviet Union were worth almost 600 million US dollars (five per cent of the GDP in 1945–48), payable mainly in products of the metal industry (but for example also 15,000 Finnhorses were included).

Society changed rapidly: young people left the countryside to look for jobs in towns. Workers protested as prices rose up but wages did not: a general strike took place in 1956 – and in 1957, rather bizarrely, the state treasury even momentarily declared insolvency, briefly stopping all payments.

Gallows humour: blind men were taught to be masseurs. Photo: Väinö Kannisto, 1950

The Fifties is also described as the decade of housewives. In Finland, the cost of living was high, many consumer goods were still rationed, social services such as day care for children were scarce, so mothers stayed home cooking, cleaning, making ends meet – and making babies. The baby-boom from 1946 to 1949 meant more than 100,000 babies each year (compared to around 60,000 in the 2000s).

After the Second World War a similar phenomenon occurred all over the world, regardless of whether the country had participated in the war or not. But in Finland the baby boomer generations were among largest in the world when compared to the generations before or after them, and three-quarters of the children were born in the countryside.

Many rather ground-breaking changes took place in the post-war decade. The standard of living slowly began to rise after ages of shortage, depression, want, slump and compulsory thrift.

Creativity revived: in the 1950s the concept of ‘Finnish design’ began to flourish; Finnish authors began surfing on a new, strong modernist wave of literature that swept over the land. Coffee was at last freely available in the shops in 1954, and the first television broadcast was aired in 1955. Gee whiz!

1952 was a special year in Finland: the Olympics took place in Helsinki, the blonde country girl Armi Kuusela was chosen Miss Universe – resulting in huge media attention for years, even decades, after she married a Filipino – and the last war reparations train crossed the border. A new, happier era had definitely started.

Noble combat: the final celebrations of the Olympics at the Helsinki stadium. Photo: Olympia-Kuva, 1952

In the photos of Rasvaletti children – lots of children – crowd the schoolyards and play in brand-new suburban surroundings. Reminders of the war that had finished just a short time ago, legless men sit in three-wheelers or weave baskets, wearing dark glasses.

But people often smile: nothing could be as bad as war.

School, everybody: children at the new Meilahti school in Helsinki. Photographer unknown, 1954

A bear pose: a small bear at the Kuusamo Predator Centre. Photo: Pasi Jäntti

Beardom is a weird, fascinating universe. We admit we have a soft spot for this furry predator, living in Finnish forests, which hibernates during the coldest months and does not eat humans (if it can possibly avoid it).

Take a look at these cuties: the New York Daily News published bear photos by a Finnish photographer on 21 November. This smash hit in bear photography is the series in which Valtteri Mulkahainen, an amateur photographer and teacher living in Sotkamo, north-eastern Finland, managed to capture a bear family in Suomussalmi last summer. Adorable creatures!

These lively triplets seem to be playing a round game while their mummy keeps on eating nearby. We hope they will live happily ever after, and that they found a good home for their winter sleep.

The estimate of the number of brown bears in the country is around 1,300. One hundred and thirty two shooting licences were issued this year. Bears in winter hibernation are strictly protected from hunting.

More bears, from the Kuusamo Predator Centre, also north-eastern Finland,  on our page (and more of Valtteri Mulkahainen’s photos can be viewed on 500px.com)!

Uudenmaankatu Street 42: a mixture of architecture from 1865–66 and 1905–07

Low-rise wooden buildings in the late 19th-century small town of Helsinki began to disappear as they were beginning to be replaced by houses built of stone. Last century wars and economic interests further changed the façades of Helsinki.

The oldest buildings may contain several generations of constructions, clearly visible or more discreet. In the past houses have been treated in a way which is no longer acceptable.

They were altered in various ways – made taller, smaller or stripped of original ornaments, often after damage in various wars, when restoration would have proved too expensive. In the end, they have become mutts and mongrels of architecture.

Upwards: an extra floor was added to the middle section of this apartment house (1910–11) in 1926.

Architect Juha Ilonen has wandered around Helsinki with his camera, capturing views that often take a Helsinki citizen by surprise.

In his new, capacious book Kolmas Helsinki – kerroksia arjen arkkitehtuurissa (‘The third Helsinki – layers in the architecture of the everyday’) Ilonen features ca. 300 buildings, from the mid-18th century to 2010. Most of them are apartment buildings situated in downtown Helsinki.

Why is it that I’ve never paid any attention to this or that extraordinary building, even though I hurry past it almost every day? Simply because I often don’t lift my gaze up from street level. The buildings speak volumes about history, aesthetics and demands of practicality.

Mariankatu Street 19: original architecture by Gustaf Estlander, 1904–05

But take a look at this house in Kruununhaka in the heart of the city – Books from Finland resided in the back yard building for years, and we had absolutely no idea that the façade had been thoroughly altered and stripped of its beautiful Jugend ornaments…

Mariankatu Street 19:  new version, by Ole Gripenberg, 1936

Ilonen’s book is a treasure trove for anybody interested in architecture, housing or city life – or photography: hundreds of black-and-white photographs feature delightful samples of the variety and quality of Helsinki architecture.

Juha Ilonen
Kolmas Helsinki – kerroksia arjen arkkitehtuurissa
The third Helsinki – layers in the architecture of the everyday]
Helsinki: AtlasArt, 2013. 304 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-952-5671-51-3
€55, hardback

Valokuva taiteeksi. Photography into Art. Hannula & Hinkka -kokoelma / Collection

It has been typical of Finland that it lacks collections of international photography, private or public. In the politically turbulent 1970s interest in photography began to grow. The Hippolyte Gallery, run by artist Ismo Kajander, exhibited international photography by Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget and Édouard Boubat, among others. The graphic designer Jorma Hinkka (also Art Director of Books from Finland, 1998–2006) began making posters for Hippolyte ‘out of pure enthusiasm’, and designing books by Finnish photographers, among them Pentti Sammallahti, Ismo Hölttö, Jorma Puranen and Merja Salo. As a result of spending so much time with ‘the black art’ (as it was called by a Finnish pioneer of photography, I.K. Inha, in 1908), Hinkka and his art director spouse Erja Hannula began to collect samples of it. After 30 years, in 2012, they donated more than two hundred photographs by almost a hundred artists to The Finnish Museum of Photography. The social status of the black art has risen considerably since the 1970s, as has professionalism in the field. This book presents excellent reproductions of the collection of photos, taken within a century and a half; the variety of styles and subjects chosen surprise with its richness.