HENRIK DUNCKER:
Relating Latvia -photography exhibition
Luova.fi
Albertinkatu 16
00120 HELSINKI
Exhibition open :
tu-fr 11 – 18, sa – su 12 – 16
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Photographer Henrik Duncker was born in 1963 in Helsinki. He graduated from The University of Arts and Design, Helsinki in 1993. Duncker has worked as an independent photographer for about 15 years. Productive Henrik Duncker has worked and held exhibitions internationally.
Duncker has had countryside as subject matter also previously: the collaborative project with Yrjö Tuunanen, Hay on the Highway, was recognized internationally while winning The European Photography Award in 1993. Since the turn of the millennium Henrik Duncker has presented for example an allegoric series of dogs titled The Innocents.
The simultaneously produced, internationally recognized series If Nokia were a place... opens views to the streets and everyday life with the bare and captivating leisure time. At the same time, the series reminds us from the other, internationally much better known Nokia – and of global capitalism.
Henrik Duncker's pictures have been published in multiple magazines, for example The New York Times, Stern, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent, Libération, Wired, Details, Carl's Cars, Rigas Laiks etc. In Finland for example Suomen Kuvalehti and the photojournalistic RAW-magazine have published his pictures.
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Henrik Duncker
Relating Latvia
28.3-27.4.2008
BACK TO THE COUNTRYSIDE
On the same occasion, two of Henrik Duncker's picture catalogues will be published: Relating Latvia and If Nokia were a place..., of which the latter is now touring Finnish photographic centres.
The exhibition has above 30 colour photographs mainly from West-Latvian countryside. Duncker has been photographing in Latvia since 2002.
Undisciplined humour is peeking from between plants and flower motifs. Henrik Duncker is topical with his documentation of the countryside of the new EU member state. His approach is personal and the condensed images of Relating Latvia are flavoured with
Duncker's energetic curiosity. Followed by coincidences this long-term project begun in 2002. Becoming a member to a Latvian family inspired Duncker to his most exuberant production.
From a dry seminar to exuberant imagery
"My first time in Latvia was in 2002: I photographed in Riga for a Finnish financial magazine. I was writhing in a seminar contemplating how Latvia is reflecting, and how it should be reflecting, itself abroad. After we interviewed President Vaira Vike-Freiberga in the rooftop bar in the tallest hotel tower of Riga, the writer and I made our way into the streets. This 27-floor elevator journey, and some other events, launched my long-term photographic relating of Latvia – as well as my permanent relation to Latvia", Henrik Duncker describes the early stages of his project.
The project took by surprise
One finds ways to do in a foreign country. "I did not decide to stat a new project: it sort of took me by surprise. Suddenly I had ten relatives in Latvia and soon we begun making regular family trips to West-Latvian countryside. When the parties are done, a city boy in a small village easily can feel stuck. I believe that at least partly I begun photographing to ease this slight claustrophobia." A picture consists of elements, still-lifes can wait for ideal lighting. "It is hard to tell beforehand what might inspire me to take a photograph. The eye, observation, plays the key role. One can be all but drowsy, and all of a sudden the picture's elements find their places. The inner tension for a picture is born. In this situation, one better have a camera at hand, at least if you want others to see the picture too. Well, if it is a still-life, one may well take a nap and do the picture later, when the light is ideal", Duncker analyzes.
Topically with personal approach
Finn Thrane writes: "The Finnish photographer Henrik Duncker is topical with his recent colour series Relating Latvia, an engaged and rather shocking documentation of the unknown parts of one of the new member-states of the European Union, classical in its personal approach, yet new in the context of Duncker."
Flower motifs and devil-may-care humour
"The close-ups in Relating Latvia are spotted and carefully chosen by a soul whose energetic curiosity is balanced by his empathy. As an outsider you notice the flee bites, you taste the cold, and you feel scared by the grim ugliness. But you also meet a segment of a population, seemingly pushed aside and left alone in their poverty but rich in their dreams of the past. And you are invited to climb a little shelf of
contemplation, from which to admire their ability to survive: their devil-may-care type of humour. From here it can only get better..."
– Finn Thrane
"What I think is that things and places in Henrik's pictures are bigger than the country which is their actual location."
"I knew the synthesis of flowery motifs and objects at my beloved native neck of the woods – which I left at the tender age of sixteen – was just
insane."
"I had never even picked up a camera to try and capture the stuff. Well, of course I hadn't. I feel too sluggish after the heavy meals – I get to polish off the strip of fat the photographer has cut off his pork chop and discreetly transferred to my plate."
– Maira Dobele
Finn Thrane – Danish, former museum director, Museet for Fotokunst, Brandts – Odense
Maira Dobele – Latvian writer who studies documentary film in Helsinki
Henrik Duncker – Finnish photographer and spouse of Maira Dobele
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