Finnish Darkroom Association

Etusivu
Suomi
Helsinki
Finnish Darkroom Association

Soita Reittiohjeet Verkkosivusto Ota yhteyttä: organisaatio

The Finnish Darkroom Association is a non-profit organisation running a professional b&w darkroom Mörk in Vallila, Helsinki.

We organise the Helsinki Analog Festival, and the Nordic Analog Network together with the CYAN Studio in Oslo. The Finnish Darkroom Association is a non-profit founded in 2016 with the purpose of ensuring the preservation of analog black and white photography. The mission of the association is to share and develop the know-how related to darkroom printing in Finland, to support the networking of individuals and organisations in the field and to create international cooperation. Anyone interested in analog photography can join as a member. Mörk is a fully equipped, professional black and white darkroom built and maintained by the association. Mörk is located in The Finnish Artists' Studio Foundation's Vallila Studio Centre in Helsinki, and it is open for all. The association actively organises courses of all levels in black and white printing and special techniques, such as collodion wet plate process and daguerreotype. The association also produces various events and exhibitions, such as the Helsinki Darkroom Festival which will be organised for the first time in the beginning of 2022 at the Museum of Finnish Photography.

24/08/2026

IT’s ON!!! Cinéstesia 🙌🔥🙌

International Seminar on Film and Visual Arts is a two-day event with keynote lectures, panel discussions, and artist talks dedicated to the moving image.
The seminar creates a space for critical reflection on the institutional, commercial, and material conditions that shape contemporary moving image practice.

The Cinéstesia screening programme is developed in collaboration with Erika Balsom.

Artists in Focus is dedicated to the work of Ben Rivers and Nour Ouayda.

Archives revisits pivotal moments in artists’ moving image and avant-garde cinema through rarely screened works by Jean Matthee and Isaac Julien and a tribute to EXPRMNTL 4 festival.

Artisanal Films celebrates analogue cinema as a living and evolving practice. The section pairs a tribute to Helsingin Elokuvapaja (1991–1998)with Yet to Come, a programme offering a snapshot of emerging moving image practices connected to Finland, with a particular emphasis on artisanal, process-based approaches.

Espoo Ciné International Film Festival
More info and tickets: espoocine.fi/cinestesia
Hashtags:

18/08/2026

Osallistu Suomen Pimiötaitelijoiden jäsennäyttelyyn!

Kutsumme jäseniämme osallistumaan Galleria Joutsenen ryhmänäyttelyyn 2.-31.10.2026!

Ilmoittaudu mukaan näyttelyyn sunnuntaihin 23.8 mennessä.

Näyttelyyn ilmoittautuneet tapaavat Mörkin tiloissa sunnuntaina 23.8 klo 14.

Lisätietoja löytyy sähköpostitse tulleesta jäsenkirjeestä.

Tervetuloa mukaan!!!

Participate in a group exhibition by the members of the Finnish Darkroom Association!

We are inviting our members to participate in a group exhibition at Galleria Joutsen from 2–31 October!

Please register for the exhibition by Sunday, August 23.
Artists participating in the exhibition will meet at Mörk’s premises on Sunday, August 23, at 2 p.m.

More info can be found in the newsletter.

Welcome onboard!

13/08/2026

Have you heard about this new kid in town?

Cinéstesia is a new initiative that combines two interconnected sections: a curated screening programme, and a cross-disciplinary international seminar.

Cinéstesia takes place during the Espoo Ciné International Film Festival, 21–30 August 2026, across venues in Espoo and Helsinki.

Let’s go check it out!

Supported by Saastamoinen Foundation

More info and tickets: espoocine.fi/cinestesia

26/07/2026

The exhibition by our board member, , is on view at Varikkogalleria in Seinäjoki until August 2nd

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PAULIINA TUOMIKOSKI
WOUND

I have never learned to love.
There has been no model.

I am bitter, bitter, bitter!
Bitter about this legacy, this burden.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Transgenerational voicelessness.
Inherited in blood. Learned in silence.

How can we recognize what is passed down, wordlessly, from one generation to the next?
Do the fates of those who came before us determine our own?
Do we fear as they have feared?

We are all part of transgenerational continuums carrying forward what we inherit, and passing it on as individuals and as a society.
An unintentional legacy.

Through the body I photograph, I explore the tensions within a person in relation to the surrounding world and to others and to others.
I examine my own experiences of transgenerational patterns of behavior and their effects, as well as experiences of emotional distance and the effort to be present, both for myself and for others. I have sought to visualize the burden I carry with me — something I first recognized in others, but have only recently begun to discover within myself.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

08/07/2026

Congrats to our board member, Katri Naukkarinen, for currently participating in:

The Contamination of Time - Ajan saastuminen
Kunsthalle Seinäjoki
Seinäjoen taidehalli
On view: 13.6.2026 - 9.1.2027

The Contamination of Time displays works that tell stories of distant stars, the slow formation of landscapes and the inevitable end of life in a deep future.
Participating artists: Petri Ala-Maunus (FI), Laura Beloff(FI), Andy Gracie (UK/ES), Katri Naukkarinen (FI) and Aurora Del Rio (IT), Elsa Salonen (FI), Emilia Tikka, Leena and Oula A. Valkeapää (FI).
Curated by Erich Berger.

Decay Cyphers is a shrine to the deity of radioactivity.
It is an oracle and a space for contemplation, where visitors are invited to decode messages received via radioactive decay.

Decay Cyphers is an artwork by the Atomic Kinship, a collaborative project between Katri Naukkarinen and Aurora Del Rio, that unravels at the intersection of artistic research and diverse philosophies to re-imagine and reflect on the implications of considering radioactivity as a deity.

The artists have gathered alimentary products known to accumulate residual radioactivity, collected from areas affected by the Chornobyl fallout in Finland. These organic materials have been cremated, and the resulting ashes are displayed in a vitrine, where a hidden radiation detector registers decay events as they happen. A custom algorithm interprets each event as a cue to change a letter on a grid, creating the possibility for words to emerge. Decay Cyphers offers meditative encounters with radioactivity, mediated by technology.

Are you open to receiving a message?

04/07/2026

Huge congrats to our member for the 2025 The Fine Arts Academy of Finland Foundation Prize and the accompanying current exhibition ❣️

💫✨💫

Below you can read an exerpt from the exhibition text by the Museum. Images by the artist.

✨💫✨

Axel Straschnoy
We believe and accept that these beings exist
15.04.2026 - 09.08.2026
EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art

Artist and filmmaker Axel Straschnoy’s (b. 1978) new work collides political utopia with scientific theories of space exploration. The work is a multi-part installation spanning the entire exhibition and an artistic research project that examines a marginal political movement known as Posadism. The movement was founded in the late 1950s by Argentine Trotskyist activist J. Posadas. Among his most radical claims, he asserted that advanced communist civilisations exist in outer space and that contact with them would enable a new kind of society on Earth, free from poverty, hunger and war.
Straschnoy revisits Posadas’ ideas in a time marked by deepening political, military and ecological crises. The exhibition space is punctuated by excerpts from a speech by Posadas published in 1968, in which he sets out his vision of communist extraterrestrial beings. The hand-painted quotations evoke both protest banners and oversized book pages while underlining the power of the printed word as a tool of political movements. The videos in the installation bring voices from space research, political history and ufology into a multifaceted dialogue.

Axel Straschnoy is Buenos Aires-born and Helsinki-based artist who has, throughout his career, employed a wide range of methods to explore practices within science and art. His long-term, multipart projects challenge viewers to look at familiar phenomena from new perspectives. In the current exhibition at EMMA, Straschnoy reflects on the limits of both political imagination and science.

01/07/2026

More exhibitions by our members!
Katya Lesiv is currently participating in two group shows.

✨ Collateral event of the 61st Venice Biennale at Palazzo Contarini Polignac:
Group exhibition Still Joy

✨ Nuoret 2026 @ taidehalli_helsinki

Katya Lesiv’s work I am going home to eat mulberries from the tree grows from a personal attachment to eating berries straight from the tree in a family garden. This became a ritual, with part of the pleasure coming from the long wait for the berries to ripen. Beyond seasonal cycles, the tasting season may be postponed indefinitely because of war, forced displacement, and other life and natural disasters. At the same time, an intention toward pleasure and safety remains within the living body, where the body itself becomes a vessel guided by this intention.

The project is rooted in sensory memory, myth, and the archetypal maternal body. Bringing together performative photography, text, and sculptural objects, the work moves between instruction, spell, and poem.

Katya Lesiv
I am going home to eat mulberries from the tree, archival silver gelatin prints, copper, textile, burned wood carved sculptures.

Group exhibition Still Joy
Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venezia, Italy
Collateral event of the 61st Venice Biennale

Until August 16, 2026.

Katya Lesiv
I am going home to eat mulberries from the tree, 600 x 800 mm, archival silver gelatin prints.
Nuoret 2026, Helsingin Taidehalli, till July 19th, 2026.

24/06/2026

Our member ••• .kubinova ••• is participating in PARADAJS PHOTO fest in Slovakia. Maya’s series ’SILENCE IN SPACE’ is on view at Galéria Schemnitz Banská Štiavnica until June 30th, 2026.

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MAYA KUBINOVA - SILENCE IN SPACE

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, ”silence” can refer to the absence of sound or speech. It can imply a state of obscurity or oblivion, where something is mostly or completely unknown. After arriving in Finland, more or less by accident, I had the opportunity to travel to the far north of the country, to Lapland. Previous to my travel there I got my first dark impression of the blurred landscape through a we**am attached to the bio-research station in Kilpisjärvi. I didn’t realize then, that during the first months of the year far North lives in complete darkness. A still mountain and moving clouds. That is it. The same scenery unchanged for millennia. Nothing else. This impression of the eternal landscape was joined by strong impression of its silence when I arrived there. We can be overwhelmed by noise. And there I realized that we can be overwhelmed by silence, too. It isolates us from the world and leaves us on our own. Northern landscape isnot a place of loneliness in spite of its vast nothingness. It is a kind of self-filling emptiness. On the other hand, there is the silence that resides in the interpersonal relationships. The Finnish word hiljaisuus means - quiet, peaceful. At the same time it is culturally conditioned feeling of relief during a break in conversation. For an outsider that break in conversation can however be puzzling, uncomfortable and if it lasts too long - contact is lost and we are left on our own again.

https://www.mayakubinova.photography

https://festival.paradajsphoto.sk/program/ticho-v-priestore

19/06/2026

Happy Midsummer to you all ☀️☀️☀️

Enjoy the warm weather, good food, and the best company. In Finland, everything slows down during Midsummer, and many people begin their summer vacation.

July is the perfect time to visit numerous art festivals, summer theatres, and exhibitions, and of course work in the darkroom 🖤▪️◼️⚫️

The Finnish Darkroom Association wishes you a joyful and relaxing summer!

Osoite

NilsiänKatu 11–13F, Käynti Nokiantien Puolelta, 3. Krs
Helsinki
00510

Puhelin

+358414563336

Verkkosivusto

http://www.pimiotaiteilijat.fi/, https://holvi.com/shop/pimiotaiteilijat/, http://linktr.ee/finnishdarkroom

Ilmoitukset

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