Janne Lehtinen has exercised an extremely personal approach in reflecting upon his life and how he has evolved into the person he is today. Lehtinen uses life as his basic contextual material for his self-reflections and his photographs as a means for projecting his attitudes towards life. He fuses a Fluxus mentality with the Nordic sense of stoicism. His photographs turn the ordinary into poetic moments where we don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Most importantly, Lehtinen is a storyteller. His art is a mixture of sculpture and performance and is realized in the studio or in natural surroundings with no audience. His subject matter may vary from his childhood memories to tracing the working patterns of his father. Yet, the common denominator found in all. His work is how he uses his notion of the family to interpret the ordinary so as to create the extraordinary.
Janne Lehtinen (*1970 in Karhula, Finland) graduated from the University of Art and Design Helsinki, todays Aalto University in 2002. His work was presented in various solo and group exhibitions, including shows at Centre Photographique (France, 2014); Kunsthalle Rostock (Germany, 2014); The Rhinelander Contemporary Art Center (France, 2008); Arles Festival of Photography (France, 2007); Museum der Stadt Tuttlingen; (Germany, 2006); Nordic center of photography (Finland, 2001) and are part of important collections such as Finnish State art collections; Helsinki City Art Museum; Pentti Kouri collections, New York among others.