Viewfinder includes photographs from art to x-rays and photo albums. During your visit, you can examine a camera obscura, photograph yourself in the studio or peek into the darkroom. The exhibition’s source of inspiration is the museum’s collection of millions of photographs and objects.
On this website, the exhibition are approached through four themes: chemistry, power, memory and people. Under each theme, online materials that deepen the topic have been compiled.
1. Chemistry
Each photograph you encounter has required light, darkness, and a photosensitive material in order to come to life. In the exhibition you can learn how photographs are made, experience the red light ambience of a darkroom and and swaying reflections inside a camera obscura.
Explore and enjoy online:
Read the Darkroom Glossary
Lighty McQuantum’s treasures
Photos: Jussi Pohjakallio: Working in the darkroom in the 1970s. / Hilja Raviniemi. The Finnish Museum of Photography
2. Power
Photos have revolutionised science, art, communication, and our social relationships. Photographs can be used as tools for both propaganda and resistance. Viewfinder approaches the relationship between power and photography with the help of numerous examples.
Explore and enjoy online:
Collection pick: Photoshopping before it was cool
Collection pick: Elvis Was Here
Collection pick: Stereoscopic Sunset
Photos: Animal locomotion, Plate 393, Eadweard Muybridge,1880’s / Otso Pietinen, Advertisement for UPO refridgerators, 1956. The Finnish Museum of Photography
3. Memory
Photos carry memories of our loved ones, the world, ourselves, and small and big moments in life. In the Viewfinder exhibition, old photo albums, group photos, portraits, a studio and objects tell the story of the history and present of photography.
Explore and enjoy online:
More than 2,000 collection photos are digitally available in Finna!
Collection pick: Life as a Street Urchin
Collection pick: In your face with a hand-held flash
Photos: Ilmari Heikkilä: A boy in the village photographer’s studio in Raivola, 1921. / Student photo. Studio Meeri Sirkkiö, 1968–1975. The Finnish Museum of Photography
4. We Photographers
What kind of a photographer are you – or do you wish to be? Photography is a form of communication and a hobby that brings great joy — it is a way of examining reality.
Explore and enjoy online:
Donate your photos to the Finnish Museum of Photography
Photos: Helvi Ahonen, 1950 – 1959. / Still images from videos. The Finnish Museum of Photography
Read more about guided Tours and Workshops and accessibility
