WATERLINE, RETROSPECTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION – ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN

PRESS RELEASE (in Finnish)

Arno Rafael Minkkinen (b. 1945 in Helsinki) has lived and worked in the United States since 1951. He is internationally renowned for his black-and-white photographs, a selected collection of which, spanning the years 1973–1994, is presented in an exhibition curated by the Pori Art Museum. After its showing in Pori, the exhibition will travel to Switzerland, where it will be displayed at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. WATERLINE marks Minkkinen’s first major exhibition in Finland. Previously, his photographs were exhibited in Finland at the Finnish Museum of Photography in 1974 and 1984, and in 1985 at a joint exhibition organized by the Pori Art Museum and Galerie Viviane Esders, PORI PARIS.

Minkkinen’s photographs are anonymous self-portraits, often featuring the artist’s own nude body as an organic part of the landscape. Water is a recurring element in his works, serving as a reflective mirror or as a concealing, protective layer. In Minkkinen’s images, all visual elements are easily observable and recognizable. The surprising quality of his work stems not so much from technical mastery but from the tension between the elements and phenomena, which imbues them with surreal allure.

Using clear and seemingly simple methods, Minkkinen creates his own interpretation of the boundaries of reality and, more concretely, the possibilities of photography itself. He uses the camera as a tool to challenge visual norms associated with perception and the recording of events. Simultaneously, the unexpectedness and even the impossibility of the captured moments disrupt faith in photography as an objective and purely documentary medium.

Minkkinen is also known as a writer and educator. He has taught photography in both the United States and Finland (at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Lahti Institute of Fine Arts). Currently, he serves as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In conjunction with the WATERLINE exhibition, a monograph on Minkkinen’s work, Waterline, will be released in Finland. Published by Editions Marval (Paris), Aperture (New York), and Otava (Helsinki), the book features text by renowned French writer Michel Tournier.

Translated with ChatGPT