Hilja Raviniemi: A Touch of Blue

Hilja Raviniemi ( born Sievänen , 1915–1973) dedicated her life to the art of photography at a time when it was still a small-scale and male phenomenon. Those who arrived from foreign exhibitions “mr. The letters addressed to Hilja Raviniemi” reveal that by default the photo artist was a man. With hard work, Raviniemi became a significant influence in the field of Finnish photography and became the first woman to become the president of the Finnish Camera Association.

Raviniemi distinguished himself in the 1960s with his Prussian blue prints, which differed from the often stark black-and-white photographic art of his time. He was a chemist by profession and his job as a laboratory technician at the imaging department of the University of Helsinki enabled Finland’s first artistic X-rays. Raviniemi’s hundreds of surviving X-ray works form an exceptional entity in the history of Finnish photography. Alongside the polished exhibition prints, the experiments and strange and even cringe-worthy cat pictures that speak of Raviniemi’s curious and humorous personality will appear in the exhibition.   

Hilja’s husband, chemist Eero Raviniemi (1911–1996), was also a distinguished photographer and pioneer of color photography in Finland. After Eero’s death, Raviniemi’s photo collection was donated to the Finnish Museum of Photographic Art.