The Helsinki City Art Museum will present in the Tennis Palace new pictures by five Finnish photographers. Elina Brotherus (b.1972), Marjaana Kella (b.1961), Ola Kolehmainen (b.1964), Andrei Lajunen (1969-1999) and Jyrki Parantainen (b.1962) have all attracted a great deal of attention both in Finland and abroad. The exhibition presents their production from the past few years, focusing on their latest work not previously seen in Finland.

The exhibition is an offshoot of Magnetic North, a review of new Finnish photography originally presented in Great Britain, in which all the photographers participated. Now they are featured in the Tennis Palace with their latest pictures, some of which have never before been seen in public. The exhibition consists of some sixty photographs and a video work by Elina Brotherus.

Marjaana Kella presents a series of portraits of people under hypnosis. The pictures awaken questions about the complex relationship between reality and images: What can actually be presented in images? What is the reality of a person who has been hypnotised? And what kind of reality is depicted by a photo of a hypnotised person? Elina Brotherus, on the other hand, shows people in a complex and ambiguous relationship with their environment. Her pictures allude both to (art) history as well as to the present day, to the private and the public. Ola Kolehmainen depicts in his large prints the reality constructed by man. In his pictures, architectural structures, spaces and surfaces are transformed into almost abstract geometric elements. Jyrki Parantainen's series The Mystery of Satisfaction is a study of human nature: the desire for power and the difficulty of seeking to attain happiness and satisfaction on both a private and general level. Parantainen's staged pictures give an aesthetically polished form to the excesses of man.

Andrei Lajunen was a talented photographer who died at a young age. The exhibition shows a large selection from his work. Lajunen's photos allude to the ways in which images and language affect our notions of reality. Pictures and words have their own reality, one which we want to denote the things surrounding us. Lajunen shows us there are holes in the contract between images and the world.

The exhibition is organised by the Helsinki City Art Museum together with producer Timothy Persons from the University of Art and Design Helsinki.

For more information, please contact: Mikko Oranen, curator, tel. (09) 310 87011, 050 345 8537 / Arja Miller, educational curator, tel. (09) 310 87007, 050 336 1980

Press material: Karri Buchert, press secretary, tel. (09) 310 87004, 050 304 6707.

Guided tours: Free guided tours are conducted in Finnish on Wednesdays at 6 pm, on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 pm; in Swedish on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month at 1 pm. To book tours at other times and in other languages, please call (09) 310 87003.