On Thursday, 25 September, Tallinn Photomonth’s main programme will open its third exhibition, just juuri nüüd nyt, at both Hobusepea and FOKU galleries. The show brings together ten photographic artists from Estonia and Finland who explore the role of photography in contemporary art and test its conceptual and material boundaries.

Images hum around us. Tiny screens glowing in our palms, glossy faces passing by in the street, endless scrolls slipping through our fingers. Most we don’t even meet; they blur. But art asks us to stay. To let the picture breathe into us, to notice the air it shifts. Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it shouts. Sometimes it just waits – quietly – for us to ask: why are you here? who made you? what do you want from us?

In this exhibition, Estonian and Finnish artists let photography spill over its edges. It softens into light, tangles with words, grows into sculpture. It collapses and re-forms. It becomes heavier, lighter, stranger. Some works lean into emotion, some press into politics, others play – giddy with the sheer fact that a photograph can live outside its frame. Here, the image is not flat. It is a room, a joke, a dream you can enter.

The jury – Marten Esko, art historian and curator; Anna Mustonen, chief curator at Kiasma, Helsinki; Marina Rusakova, art historian and founder of Punctum Gallery; and me, artist and board member of the Finnish Association of Photographic Artists (VTL) – chose ten artists from over 500 members of VTL and the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU). We were guided by rhythm, by curiosity, by the restless wish to let photography matter differently.

This exhibition is also the first thread in a new weave between FOKU and VTL, a soft beginning of collaboration. When Estonian and Finnish practices meet, it feels like music in a shared room: distinct voices, entangled.

Here, photography is not only an image.
It is a pause. A spark.
An opening.

– Hertta Kiiski, curator

Artists participating in the exhibition are Andre Joosep Arming, Cloe Jancis, Karel Koplimets, Kristina Õllek and Maria Kapajeva from Estonia, and Andrey Bogush, Karl Ketamo, Maija Tammi, Noora Geagea and Saara Ekström from Finland.

The exhibition opens on 25 September at 18 at Hobusepea Gallery. Visitors are also invited to take part in the public programme of the exhibition. Preceding the opening, at 17, there will be an English-language curator’s tour, starting at FOKU Gallery, and on the following day, 26 September at 14, an English-language artist panel (moderated by Marten Esko) will take place at FOKU. The show runs until 19 October at Hobusepea Gallery and until 29 November at FOKU Gallery.

The main supporters of Tallinn Photomonth are the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the City of Tallinn. Exhibitions at Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko AS.
Thank you: Eckerö Line Ab Oy, Hestia Hotel Barons, Anna Niskanen, Henna Harri, Anna Airaksinen, photography magazine Positiiv.