Andrea Holzherr
from the book The Helsinki School - A Female View

Nelli Palomäki

Since the invention of the camera and its subsequent popularization, portraiture has been one of the main subjects in photography. A number of the most famous photographers in the history of photography have taken portraiture as their main subject, some choosing their subjects, and others commercializing their skills through commissions.

Nelli Palomäki belongs to the first category, she is among those photographers, like Diane Arbus, who carefully look for and choose the people that they then portray. The reference to Diane Arbus is not arbitrary. Even though her results are very different, Palomäki shares Diane Arbus’s peculiar ability to choose her subjects with discerning certainty. It is this clairvoyance in her selection of subjects that makes her work so magical.

“My pictures force me to go close to people,” Nelli Palomäki says in her personal statement. In order to do her photographs, she has to look for people, observe them, and imagine them in the viewfinder of her camera. It is a long and delicate process which involves finding, observing, connecting to, convincing, and finally photographing the chosen person. The process and ensuing relationship can break down at any moment. Perhaps it is the fragility of the connection between the photographer and her subject that confers a certain delicate and mysterious beauty to Palomäki’s photographs.

If it wasn’t for Nelli Palomäki, these people wouldn’t be in those frames, in these postures, and with these expressions. Their beauty, discovered and displayed by the photographer, would remain unnoticed.

Artist Statement .

I almost never carry my camera with me. Sometimes its presence even haunts me. It’s more fun to view the environment without the pressure of photographing it. Running children with an angry mother after them, a big cockroach crossing the ship’s deck, a lonely man with a sleeping bag under his arm and a family playing cards together. Do they notice me? I imagine where people are going and how they live. An old woman must be lonely and that’s why she’s carrying a big bag of doughnuts, only to lie about coming visitors. A man walks to his hangout bar every day to sit and watch people without saying a word to anyone. It would be romantic to think that he must be a writer, but probably he’s just a lonely man. A child dangles a cat from its tail without anyone telling the child not to. A fashionable woman in the perfume department looks at me with contempt, I feel like laughing. -

I sit in the tram and follow two little girls. They look remarkably alike. Although the girls are playing together, they have sad looks on their faces. Even the greatest laugh will not change the seriousness of the faces. The girls stay in my thoughts for a long time. After a few months, I see them again, this time with their mother. I end up taking a portrait of Elsa and Viola in their home. I stuff the girls in one big tulle dress to keep them as close to each other as possible for a longer time. The girls sit seriously next to each other and look the same as they did months before. I’m amused by their seriousness, at the same time there is something sad about it.
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The way people act in front of camera, is truly fascinating. Desperately searching for their mirror-face which only exist in their mind. Everyone is aware of their better side and even more aware of their flaws, unsuccessfully hiding them. But they can recognize the same thing in me, realizing this makes me really insecure and nervous. This makes the portraiture, the actual moment of taking the image, really extraordinary. Accepting the fact that we are there as we really exist, with our good and bad features, makes it suddenly quite comfortable. -

I search for the perfect picture, but it escapes. In the end, a portrait is always different from what I expected. Other pictures surprise me with their strength, others merely disappoint me. Disappointment, however, motivates me to continue. Excitement after each shoot is always as great, the fear of failure always as fascinating. I sit in the tram and study new negatives. Against the window they look successful. But I know the pictures will end up different than I expect. Something has changed. Perhaps the person’s eyes are just about to close, a child has moved or there is a trace of an irritating artificial smile. A picture planned beforehand changes through coincidence and surprises and escapes from the photographer. If I succeeded in taking the perfect picture, I would hardly continue shooting.