FOTO TALLINN
This was the main reason for my trip here to Tallinn. Without taking anything away from the festival itself, I was nevertheless glad to find some solid exhibitions at both Fotografiska, with Vivian Maier and Inta Ruka, and at Dokfoto, with Jean-Louis Courtinat. The festival itself was not particularly extensive, and most of the exhibitors were galleries showing photography and art aimed at collectors and buyers.
Of course, that is partly on me. I had not studied the programme and content well enough beforehand, so I have to take that into account. The decision to go was made rather quickly. I saw the festival advertised last Wednesday and thought, well, why not — I’m going!
So, let’s put that aside for a moment and look at what I actually found there.
There were some talks announced, and the venue itself was not particularly large. You could walk through the whole thing in a good half hour or so. I am a photographer, and naturally I see things from that perspective, and I have to admit that I was probably not the target audience here. So, for me, quite a lot of it missed the mark. The gallery representatives were not particularly welcoming either, at least that was how I experienced it. If you approached them directly and asked questions, they would engage in conversation, but many were sitting on chairs doing their own thing, either working on their laptops or simply having a rather uninviting attitude.
There were, however, some honourable exceptions, and they also represented much of the photographic art that I found interesting, purely subjectively speaking.
There was Galleria Halmentoja from Helsinki, Mäksla XO Galerija based in Riga, Latvia, and also a gallery called Alma &, representing photographer Vika Eksta, who was definitely worth taking note of.
And last but not least, photographer Jói Kjartans. Kjartans is Icelandic, but has lived in Norway for 12 years and works out of Oslo. Meeting him was actually a very interesting encounter. He was there with his series The Island, a body of work from a new encounter with his old homeland. All the images can be found in the latest issue of NJP (Norwegian Journal of Photography), #7 in the series of books presenting Norwegian contemporary photographers. The publication is produced by none other than Gøsta Flemming and Journal.
The talks
As for the talks, they were somewhat mixed. Some were held in English, but many were in Estonian. So, for my part, I attended three talks spread across the days.
On day one, there was an artist talk with the UK/Belgium-based photographer Sarah Stone. It did not last very long; I would guess 25–30 minutes. But the whole thing was arranged inside the exhibition, and the microphone was a wireless device connected to the ceiling speakers throughout the venue. As a result, the conversation came across as somewhat lacking in professionalism on the part of the organisers.
Stone talked about her thoughts behind the series she was exhibiting, consisting of photographs of objects and table surfaces taken at various flea markets. She explained that she viewed these as portraits of used objects, rather than still lifes.
Unfortunately, the disturbances and general noise from the rest of the venue did not do the conversation justice.
On Saturday, I attended a similar conversation between two people from the museum world. Infrek Grigor from Tartu Art Museum was in conversation with Anna Tellgren, curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. They discussed the subject What does a museum do to photographs?
This talk took place in the auditorium. Here there were proper cinema-style seats, a large screen for showing images, excellent acoustics and microphone systems that actually worked. Why weren’t all the talks held here?
It was soundproofed from the rest of the exhibition space and had direct access from the exhibition area through the reception. For me, this is a mystery.
The talk itself was interesting. Anna Tellgren spoke a lot about how the museum builds its collections, the processes involved, and, not least, what lies behind the decisions about who gets exhibitions in such major institutions. She also talked about those who try to take a shortcut into the collection by donating photographs, but explained that this is not accepted. Accepting that kind of arrangement simply to get something for free would compromise the museum’s integrity. So they have clear guidelines for how acquisitions and exhibitions are handled and selected.
It was a very well-executed talk that lasted a good hour and ended with questions from the audience.
Then there was the last talk I found interesting: a presentation of two photobooks connected to photographers represented in the festival programme. But again, it was held in the exhibition space. It was difficult to hear because of all the surrounding noise. So I have to admit that I never quite caught who was behind the first book, while the second was a presentation with Jói Kjartans about NJP #7, which I have already mentioned.
Here too, quite a crowd gathered around Jói, and I ended up on the outskirts, with several loud people right around me who were focused on completely different things. So once again, the conditions were far from optimal, and the whole thing seemed somewhat underplanned and perhaps included mainly to provide a little variety in the programme.
I would therefore strongly recommend that the organisers put more effort into the professional programme beyond the actual exhibitions and gallery stands. Most importantly, use a dedicated venue for the talks, -the auditorium in this case, and make sure that speakers, introductions and interviewers for the artist talks are properly prepared. For the most part, the talks at this festival seemed somewhat randomly planned.
And if you are focusing on a local audience, then fine, do it in Estonian. But if the festival is international and marketed as such, the professional programme needs to be in English.
This time there were 16 professional events in total, and just 10 of them were in English.
The galleries and photographers I noticed
So, on to the galleries and photographers that caught my attention and that I would like to give some extra attention to.
Galleria Halmentoja, Helsinki, Finland
First up are the lovely women at the Galleria Halmentoja stand. They were welcoming and did a good job of talking about the photographers they represented. I particularly noticed two of them. First, the documentary photographs by Antti J. Leinonen. Motifs from the life of fishermen. These photographs had also been published as a book, a book which, according to the gallery representatives, is already sold out at the publisher. They also had some very clean and elegant photographs by photographer Elina Brotherus. Images with titles such as Living Room, Stairs and Ribbon Window. These were self-portraits taken inside an architect-designed house in Tartu, Estonia.
This was one of two houses designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto to be built outside Finland. The house in question is called Villa Tammekann and was completed in 1933.
Beautiful photographs, and absolutely the kind of images that could decorate modern architect-designed villas today.
Gallery Mäksla XO, Latvia
They represented the photographs of Roman Korovin, presented here as a kind of diptych series, only with nine images. That is technically called an enneaptych, from the Greek ennea, meaning nine, combined with ptyk, referring to a fold or panel.The series caught my attention. The photographs were not like much of the other work in the exhibition, blown up to large dimensions. No, they were perhaps around 20 × 30 cm or something similar, but there were nine of them, and through these nine images a complete story unfolded.
The main motif was a man sitting on a bench on a beach. But with each new image, different elements entered the man’s life there on the beach. Eventually, a young couple appeared and also took their place on the bench. The man then left the scene, and the couple took over in a kind of solitary embrace there on the beach. A beautiful story with a clear beginning and a clear ending.
The colour tones and simplicity of the subject, without too many distractions, placed the series clearly within the ptyk tradition. Beautifully captured. Whether it was staged or not doesn’t really matter here, because the story was clear and beautifully presented.
Gallery Alma &, Latvia
This gallery had a series of black-and-white photographs that had been printed using analogue processes, with each image printed across two sheets to create a somewhat larger format. So every photograph consisted of two prints, with half a negative on each sheet. These were strong documentary photographs from the countryside, presumably in Latvia, since both the photographer, Vika Eksta, and the gallery are based there.
As I said, the analogue prints had a beautiful sense of materiality, and this is a photographer I want to explore further after returning home.
Jói Kjartans
And then we come to the Icelandic photographer Jói Kjartans, who has lived in Oslo, Norway, for the past 12 years. It was actually a relief to speak a little Norwegian among all the English. Jói talked about his book projects and about his stay at a week-long workshop with J.H. Engström in Paris. He arrived with 100 photographs for a potential book project, but was quickly told to come back the next day with another 200 photographs…
But the book project seems to have worked out, and the book is on its way with a Norwegian publisher. Jói had applied through an open call to participate in the festival and was, along with a small number of others, given a place. He talked about some great days and many nice people who stopped by his stand. His exhibition consisted of the 36 photographs from the series The Island, which is part of NJP #7, published by Journal earlier this year.
He was so pleased with the sequence of photographs as they appear in the book that he had chosen to use the exact same sequence on the exhibition wall. I liked his photographs a lot, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on this photographer in the future.
A nice encounter with a stranger
There was also a short and completely accidental, but very pleasant conversation with photographer and professor of photography Peeter Linapp. I gave him my little promotional folder that I had made for this trip to Tallinn, and he sent me an email already this evening with a very nice little greeting. I love dedicated people, and I had already noticed Peeter because of the questions he asked during the conversations in the auditorium with Grigor and Tellgren.
But it was only when I heard from him this evening that I realised who he was. A meeting I thought was worth mentioning at the very end of this story.
Thank you for the conversation, Peeter!
And finally…
I have also tried to find bookshops with a decent selection of photobooks. Something I found surprisingly difficult here in Tallinn.
I have also tried to find somewhere selling analogue film. I eventually found one: Fotomeister Pluss OÜ, actually right in the neighbourhood where I am staying.
But I did find Fotografiska, Dokfoto and Fotomuseum, which provided a few sources of inspiration and enrichment for the trip,
-because, after all, this trip was really about photography, in all the forms I could find.
Well, tomorrow I have a flight back to Norway at 12:05, so then it is time to go home and look through my own photographs from the trip. I have also found some time along the way for a little work of my own.
