Helsinki 1908 comes to life in photos by I.K. Inha
Celebrated photographer of landscapes and White Sea Karelia charted the changes to the capital
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By Anu Uimonen
The photographer I. K. Inha (1865-1930) was at the height of his posthumous modern-day glory a couple of years ago, when two books were published on his work, while two museums simultaneously widely presented his photographs.
One side of Inha’s photographic production, however, only played a minor role at that time, namely images of the Finnish capital Helsinki.
In the exhibitions staged by the Finnish Museum of Photography and the Gallen-Kallela Museum, Inha was spotlighted above all as a recorder of nature, the Finnish countryside, and the area known as Vienan Karjala, or White Sea Karelia (also "Archangel Karelia"), now mostly across the border in Russia.
But when nearly two hundred glass negatives of photographs that Inha had shot in Helsinki were recently uncovered in the archives of the publishing house WSOY, there was suddenly a good reason to produce one more Inha book and to set up one more exhibition.
The subject is Helsinki a hundred years ago.
Into Konrad Inha was not just a photographer but also an editor, translator, and author.
Towards the end of the 1800s, Inha toured around Finland and took photographs for a book called Suomi kuvissa (“Finland in Images”), captured images of people in the Karelia wilds, and documented Finnish agriculture for the Paris World Exhibition.
More than 2,000 of Inha’s photographs still remain today.
The Helsinki images were Inha’s last large-scale commission. In the summer of 1908, publishers WSOY asked him to take photographs for a Helsinki guide book to be produced.
The small Helsingin opas (“Guide to Helsinki”) was published in 1910 with 60 matchbox-size photographs taken by Inha on its pages.
This was less than a third of the 190 glass negatives that were then carefully filed in the WSOY image archives.
There the images lay dormant and forgotten for nearly a hundred years, until they were discovered in connection with a storage inventory in 2006 and were promptly handed over to the Finnish Museum of Photography.
“It was known that Inha had photographed Helsinki, but the total number of images came as a surprise, as did the fact that the glass negatives were in such good condition”, explains special researcher Jukka Kukkonen from the museum.
In cooperation with the long-time WSOY image editor Ritva Toiviainen and the author Kjell Westö, Kukkonen has now produced a book based on Inha’s images, called Helsinki – valon kaupunki (“Helsinki - a City of Light”).
An exhibition by the same name was launched on Wednesday of last week in the Virka Gallery of the Helsinki City Hall.
When observing Inha’s Helsinki images it is easy to accept the description of Inha as Finland’s first actual photographic artist.
He understood light, and with each image he chose the moment of exposure with great care.
In his work light caresses the city’s stone walls and the rippling waters.
Inha’s Helsinki is, above all, a city of buildings. Inha’s interest towards the built environment may well have been sparked by the fact that his brother Usko Nyström was an architect.
People in Inha’s images are quite anonymous. They remain as composition elements rather than recognisable individuals.
In this respect Inha stands apart from his contemporaries Signe Brander and Ivan Timiriasev, who also photographed Helsinki, and in whose images one can often catch an eye-to-eye contact from decades ago.
I. K. Inha limited the Helsinki he was interested in photographing to the south side of the Pitkäsilta bridge crossing the Kaisaniemi Bay.
Inha avoided the working-class quarters, unlike Brander, whose take on Helsinki was more sociable all-around.
In his text, author Kjell Westö characterises fittingly that in her photographs Signe Brander concentrated on depicting the disappearing small town, whereas Inha’s object of interest was the emerging much larger city.
Inha’s Helsinki is an elegant European capital, characterised by Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) architecture, lush parks, trams, and ships.
The city is in transition: streets are being constructed, goods are brought into the docks.
The urban nature was also important to Inha: for one, he photographed every one of Helsinki’s beaches.
Even though Inha photographed for a tourist guide, he does not concentrate on boastful images of tourist attractions.
The St. Nicholas Church (Helsinki's Lutheran Cathedral) and the Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral merely lurk in the background.
Inha depicts facades and street views of the stone city, or beaches and parks from the point of view of someone wondering in the streets, but he skips over modest wooden houses and their backyards.
When one views the images today, a strange sense of peace exudes from them.
If two trams happen to fit in the same image, that can be considered a major traffic jam.
The new book also includes excerpts from the 1910 Guide of Helsinki. The descriptions give a much more frenetic impression than the unperturbed images. Of the street Aleksanterinkatu, the guide says:
“The sidewalks are packed with people, and on the street itself trams, automobiles, and bicycles frequently hurtle by accompanied by horse-drawn carriages and heavy cargo wagons. As far as the eye can see the street flanks are filled with shops and businesses, the large display windows of which compete with each other in ostentation, and the light flooding from which - when it is dark - quite outshines the dim glow of the street lights.”
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.4.2009
Helsinki - Valon kaupunki (Helsinki - City of Light) I.K. Inha's images from the early 20th century. Publ. WSOY, 240 pp. EUR 49.00.
An exhibition of the photographs from the book is open to the public at the Virka Gallery in City Hall (Pohjoisesplanadi 11-13) until April 23rd. Mon-Fri 9-19, Sat-Sun 11-17.
The photographer I. K. Inha (1865-1930) was at the height of his posthumous modern-day glory a couple of years ago, when two books were published on his work, while two museums simultaneously widely presented his photographs.
One side of Inha’s photographic production, however, only played a minor role at that time, namely images of the Finnish capital Helsinki.
In the exhibitions staged by the Finnish Museum of Photography and the Gallen-Kallela Museum, Inha was spotlighted above all as a recorder of nature, the Finnish countryside, and the area known as Vienan Karjala, or White Sea Karelia (also "Archangel Karelia"), now mostly across the border in Russia.
But when nearly two hundred glass negatives of photographs that Inha had shot in Helsinki were recently uncovered in the archives of the publishing house WSOY, there was suddenly a good reason to produce one more Inha book and to set up one more exhibition.
The subject is Helsinki a hundred years ago.
Into Konrad Inha was not just a photographer but also an editor, translator, and author.
Towards the end of the 1800s, Inha toured around Finland and took photographs for a book called Suomi kuvissa (“Finland in Images”), captured images of people in the Karelia wilds, and documented Finnish agriculture for the Paris World Exhibition.
More than 2,000 of Inha’s photographs still remain today.
The Helsinki images were Inha’s last large-scale commission. In the summer of 1908, publishers WSOY asked him to take photographs for a Helsinki guide book to be produced.
The small Helsingin opas (“Guide to Helsinki”) was published in 1910 with 60 matchbox-size photographs taken by Inha on its pages.
This was less than a third of the 190 glass negatives that were then carefully filed in the WSOY image archives.
There the images lay dormant and forgotten for nearly a hundred years, until they were discovered in connection with a storage inventory in 2006 and were promptly handed over to the Finnish Museum of Photography.
“It was known that Inha had photographed Helsinki, but the total number of images came as a surprise, as did the fact that the glass negatives were in such good condition”, explains special researcher Jukka Kukkonen from the museum.
In cooperation with the long-time WSOY image editor Ritva Toiviainen and the author Kjell Westö, Kukkonen has now produced a book based on Inha’s images, called Helsinki – valon kaupunki (“Helsinki - a City of Light”).
An exhibition by the same name was launched on Wednesday of last week in the Virka Gallery of the Helsinki City Hall.
When observing Inha’s Helsinki images it is easy to accept the description of Inha as Finland’s first actual photographic artist.
He understood light, and with each image he chose the moment of exposure with great care.
In his work light caresses the city’s stone walls and the rippling waters.
Inha’s Helsinki is, above all, a city of buildings. Inha’s interest towards the built environment may well have been sparked by the fact that his brother Usko Nyström was an architect.
People in Inha’s images are quite anonymous. They remain as composition elements rather than recognisable individuals.
In this respect Inha stands apart from his contemporaries Signe Brander and Ivan Timiriasev, who also photographed Helsinki, and in whose images one can often catch an eye-to-eye contact from decades ago.
I. K. Inha limited the Helsinki he was interested in photographing to the south side of the Pitkäsilta bridge crossing the Kaisaniemi Bay.
Inha avoided the working-class quarters, unlike Brander, whose take on Helsinki was more sociable all-around.
In his text, author Kjell Westö characterises fittingly that in her photographs Signe Brander concentrated on depicting the disappearing small town, whereas Inha’s object of interest was the emerging much larger city.
Inha’s Helsinki is an elegant European capital, characterised by Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) architecture, lush parks, trams, and ships.
The city is in transition: streets are being constructed, goods are brought into the docks.
The urban nature was also important to Inha: for one, he photographed every one of Helsinki’s beaches.
Even though Inha photographed for a tourist guide, he does not concentrate on boastful images of tourist attractions.
The St. Nicholas Church (Helsinki's Lutheran Cathedral) and the Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral merely lurk in the background.
Inha depicts facades and street views of the stone city, or beaches and parks from the point of view of someone wondering in the streets, but he skips over modest wooden houses and their backyards.
When one views the images today, a strange sense of peace exudes from them.
If two trams happen to fit in the same image, that can be considered a major traffic jam.
The new book also includes excerpts from the 1910 Guide of Helsinki. The descriptions give a much more frenetic impression than the unperturbed images. Of the street Aleksanterinkatu, the guide says:
“The sidewalks are packed with people, and on the street itself trams, automobiles, and bicycles frequently hurtle by accompanied by horse-drawn carriages and heavy cargo wagons. As far as the eye can see the street flanks are filled with shops and businesses, the large display windows of which compete with each other in ostentation, and the light flooding from which - when it is dark - quite outshines the dim glow of the street lights.”
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.4.2009
Helsinki - Valon kaupunki (Helsinki - City of Light) I.K. Inha's images from the early 20th century. Publ. WSOY, 240 pp. EUR 49.00.
An exhibition of the photographs from the book is open to the public at the Virka Gallery in City Hall (Pohjoisesplanadi 11-13) until April 23rd. Mon-Fri 9-19, Sat-Sun 11-17.
ANU UIMONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anu.uimonen@hs.fi