"The Extra/Ordinary World of Pentti Sammallahti" Exhibition

Nailya Alexander Gallery

poster for "The Extra/Ordinary World of Pentti Sammallahti" Exhibition

This event has ended.

The exhibition showcases some fifty photographs from 1964 to 2010. The exhibition will be held in conjunction with Pentti Sammallahti’s retrospective at The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki (September 2010- February 2011).

From early childhood Pentti Sammallahti (b. 1950) was drawn to photography. Growing up, he was surrounded by the works of his grandmother, Hildur Larsson (1882-1952), a Swedish-born photographer, who worked for the Helsinki newspaper Kaiku in the early 1900s. After visiting The Family of Man exhibition at Helsinki Art Hall (1961) Sammallahti made his first prints at age eleven. Pentti joined the Helsinki Camera Club in 1964. His first solo exhibition was in 1971.

Sammallahti is a poet of his native Helsinki; a philosopher, who cherishes the nature and solitude of the great north; and a wanderer, who makes subtle observations of the people and animals he encounters. Recording ordinary occurrences, he alludes to existential themes. Regardless of where he travels – France, Italy, Japan, India, US, Nepal, Russia or Finland – a gentle humor is visible in his work. Grace Glueck in her New York Times review spoke of “Mr. Sammallahti's work being playful and lyrically intimate, making poetry from small visual surprises.” His seemingly effortless and quiet images stir a viewer’s emotions and are exquisitely composed.

From 1974 to 1991 Sammallahti taught photography at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, retiring when he received a 15-year grant from the Finnish government, which allowed him to travel more. As a master craftsman, Sammallahti meticulously tones his gelatin silver prints. These come in various formats, from prints of 4 by 5 inches to panoramas of 6 by 14 inches. For his retrospective exhibition in Helsinki he created large format pigment prints, about 9 by 21 inches and 15 by 35.5 inches in size, and the gallery is happy to include some of them in their New York exhibition.

[Image: Pentti Sammallahti "Solovki, White Sea, Russia" from the series 'The Russian Way' (1992) gelatin silver print or pigment print 6 x 14 in. or 8.8 x 22 in.]

Media

Schedule

from January 20, 2011 to March 10, 2011

Opening Reception on 2011-01-20 from 18:00 to 20:00

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