Collectors from around the world are scrambling for photographs from Scandinavia, and the work of Janne Lehtinen (*1970), one of Finland’s best young photographers, has been raising a ruckus for several years now. Thus we are all the more pleased to be able to present Night Shift, the Helsinki School photographer’s third publication with Hatje Cantz, after Sacred Bird and The Descendants. The setting of Lehtinen’s latest project is a small city in Finland. Between January and December 2006, the photographer prowled its streets at night, camera in hand, and in the process, he also took portraits of the father at six o’clock in the morning, just as he was coming off his night shift at a paper mill. Reality and fiction are blended; real events from the past are revived in staged images. As in his earlier, autobiographically tinged series of works, Lehtinen photographs poignantly reveal the actualities of childhood and make the bonds between the generations visible. Exhibition schedule: Helsinki City Art Museum, Kluuvi Gallery, January 25–February 10, 2008
Community Notes