PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY HIPPOLYTE
Yrjönkatu 8–10 (courtyard), 00120 Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16

30.5.–27.6.2014
KATRI NAUKKARINEN
So Many Constellations

Is there a place for unstaged photography in art?

Katri Naukkarinen doesn’t know what her next photograph will look like. She doesn’t have an idea ready for what she might photograph or what the image would be about.

A camera travels with Katri Naukkarinen as a part of her life. Her method of taking the act of photography lightly is a result of years of learning and contemplating. With it she gathers and accumulates an archive she uses as a base for her installations. It is a positive and a concrete way to ponder the role of everyday thinking in the art of photography.

“I learned to photograph only after rejecting dates and strategies for taking pictures and most of all rejecting ideas for images: The ideas for a picture and the ideas concerning me as a creator of those images. Taking photographs should be meaningful here and now, not unlike existence.”

With her actions, Naukkarinen reflects not only her own perception but also the act of making the immediate environment meaningful. In principle the images could be seen as straight or documentary photography, flirting also with snapshot genre. However, an installation of an exhibition is another thing all together. The title for the exhibition is a quote from a poem by Paul Celan. So Many Constellations is a feeling of awe and a sigh when faced with all the meanings.

Katri Naukkarinen (1984) graduated as a photographer from the Institute of Design and Fine Arts in Lahti and is currently finishing her MA in Photography at Aalto University in Helsinki. Previously she has studied Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki. In her thesis she contemplates the possibilities and problematics of unstaged photography in the context of art. Naukkarinen’s works have been most recently seen in solo exhibitions at B-Galleria in Turku, at a group exhibition at Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari 1 and also at Summer School – an exhibition celebrating 40 years of the Union of Student Photographers of Finland – at The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki and at TR1 Kunsthalle in Tampere.

The exhibition has been supported by Finnfoto and the National Council for Photograhic Art.
Opening drinks kindly supplied by Happy Joe Organic.

Katri Naukkarinen, Green Scare, 2010-2012