Visit to The Finnish Museum of Photography

Today we did a visit to The Finnish Museum of Photography with a small amount of people from the Field Trip group. Only five persons showed up, so not too many. The museum is located in Kaapelitehdas, which is an old cable factory in Ruoholahti area. I have always liked that building, it has beautiful white halls with black velvet curtains. I had never visited the photography museum before, although I enjoy looking at good photos a lot.

The first exhibition that we saw was part of The Festival od Political Photography 2017, and it was called Post-Food. There were photos from several different photographers, and all of them had different themes that were somehow about food and politics around it.

I enjoyed much about the photos, that were taken by Tim Franco. The collection was called Metamorpolis, and the photos were taken in Chongqing area of western China. The area around the metropolis used to be for farming, many poor people got their living out of it. But the growing of the metropolis had taken lands from the farmers, who are still trying to cope by farming in the city. They still have small farming areas next to skyscrapers and motorways. This collections also gave me some ideas how the life is in huge cities in China. I haven't been to China yet, but I'm trying to visit at least one new country every year, so I think that China will be my destination some day.

I also liked Yann Mingard's collection called Deposit. It was about how humans have started to deposit the world's biological heritage. People have built vaults to store seeds and DNA information of different species. The vault that I have heard before is located in Svalbard, and the seeds of each crop known to mankind is stored there. I found some of the photos, especially those about collecting semen samples from animals, quite harsh.

The most emotional part of the exhibition for me was the photo collection from Pablo Ernesto Piovano, which was called The human cost of agrotoxins. He had taken the photos in Argentina, where a company called Monsanto has used toxic pesticides on their fields, where they grow genetically modified soybeans. On those areas the amounts of cancers, miscarriages and malformations among people have increased. Even though it's now known that the pesticides are the reason for it, the use of them is continuing, because mainstream media hasn't reported about it. The photos show people with extreme malformations standing on the fields. Pablo Piovano has said: "If major corporations have control over seeds and food production, they also have control over our health and our freedom."

We also went to see another exhibition, which was called Mobile Albums. It had mobile photos from some asylum seekers, who had arrived to Finland. The asylum seekers had chosen some photos from their phones, that meant really much for them. Some photos where taken before they left from their home countries, some were from their travel, and some even from the time spent in Finland. I found it very interesting, because I do volunteer work among young asylum seekers, so I got some more ideas of their thoughts again.

During the museum visit we discussed only in English, and when we wanted to know more about the photos, we read the information in English. 

Independent studies so far: 8/51

Field trip group so far: 5/20