Ville Lenkkeri

The Helsinki School: The Nature of Being, Vol. 6

Publisher: Hatje Cantz, 2019.

Ed. Timothy Persons, Asia Zak Persons, text(s) by Grey Crawford, Antje-Britt Mählmann, Timothy Persons, Marja Sakari, graphic design by Full Metal Jacket.

Format: 24 x 29 cm

Language: English

ISBN 978-3-7757-4699-1

Persons Projects is happy to present the new volume of The Helsinki School: The Nature of Being, Vol. 6. The publication has been launched Saturday 7 November during Paris Photo Fair 2019.

It concentrates on bringing together the various approaches used by the School’s representatives to conceptualize nature visibly. The stated goal is not to limit oneself to purely physical depictions of animals, plants, and landscapes. Nature ought to be expressed through a di¤erent type of unit and with a new way of gauging time. Days, months, and seasons become the points of crystallization for time. Thus, the photographs reflect a Nordic sense about feelings of loneliness, jealousy, or desire. The works provide photographic insight into the complex horizon of emotions that characterize our individual views of nature. They do not portray landscape as such, but the world in which we live.
Since the 1990s the name Helsinki School has been used to describe a group of fine art photographers who studied, taught, or graduated from the Aalto University’s School of Art, Design and Architecture. The term unites a consistent conceptual approach.

Ville Lenkkeri: Medical Records of a Small Town

Publisher: Kerber Verlag, June 2017
Texts: Ville Lenkkeri

Design: Réka Király

Format: 24 x 22 cm

Pages: 156 with 86 colored illustrations
Language: English, Finnish

ISBN 978-3-7356-0390-6

Medical Records of a Small Town / Pikkukaupungin sairaskertomus

Medical Records of a Small Town is a study of an eccentric man: For the son, the artist Ville Lenkkeri (*1972), he is a dad, quite impossible to access. For the people in the small town deep in the Finnish woods he is a doctor in good reputation, always at service and known to be funny in a morbid manner. He is one of the last of that kind. For over thirty-five years he received the town folks and filled a large cabinet with their ailment records. He passed away on Sunday, after accomplishing his work on Friday. The publication tells the story of this man not only with photographs but also with stories of the inhabitants and writings of this eccentric. Ville Lenkkeri created a very personal homage to his father.

Ville Lenkkeri: Medical Records of a Small Town

Ville Lenkkeri: The Petrified Forest

Publisher: Kerber Verlag, November 2016
Texts: Ville Lenkkeri
Design: Réka Király

Format: 27 x 24 cm
Pages: 160 with 92 colored illustrations
Language: English

ISBN 978-3-7356-0257-2

The Petrified Forest / Kivettynyt metsä
"The Petrified Forest” is a set of photographs and texts that reflect the memories and mental images Ville Lenkkeri has of the little town in the Finnish woods where he grew up. The photographs are stages but they spring from the emotions and memories that he has and which cause him to still call the place his hometown today. The short texts in the book represent missing pictures in the series and they deepen the understanding of the given situations and thus guide the viewer. "The Petrified Forest” is a series that deals not only with subjective memories and growing up in an industrial small town, but also with the structure of truth and nature of representation – a strong link to Lenkkeri’s earlier work. The book is the artist’s fourth impressive monograph.

Ville Lenkkeri
Existence Doubtful

Published by: Kerber Verlag in 2014
Format: ca 27,00 × 23,00 cm, hardcover, bound
Pages: approx. 208 pages, with numerous illustrations
Edited by: Ville Lenkkeri
Artist: Ville Lenkkeri
Languages: English
Graphic design: Réka Kiraly / Petter Jacobson
ISBN: 978-3-86678-975-3
https://www.kerberverlag.com/en/photography/ville_lenkkeri/product-3037.html

The third book of Ville Lenkkeri "Existence Doubtful” consists of pictures from Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego as well as of a text that uses the physical journeys as a frame, but takes side steps to subjects like humanism, colonialism, greed, representation and the potentials of photography. The book celebrates the matters and events of doubtful nature as well as illusions and uncertainties that shake the reality based world order and save us from the expected, safe and control. Ville Lenkkeri's pictures move inside the disturbing, unfocused zone between reality and fiction.

The Helsinki School: From the Past to the Future

Published by: Hatje Cantz, 2014
Format: 29.50 x 24.50 cm, hardcover
Pages: ca. 256 pages, ca. 180 illustrations
Texts: Holger Broeker, Alistair Hicks,Erika Hoffman-Koenige,
Andréa Holzherr,Timothy Persons, Lyle Rexer, Pari Stave,
Christoph Tannert, Jyrki Parantainen
Language: English
Graphic design by: Hannes Aechter
ISBN 978-3-7757-3901-6
Hatje Cantz

I find it amazing that after twenty years of existence, the Helsinki School cannot be defined by any one fixed point of view. Conceptually there is a red thread connecting one generation to another in the way they perceive and present their ideas but not necessarily in how they apply them.

– Timothy Persons (introduction)

Ville Lenkkeri
The Place of No Roads

Published by: Hatje Cantz in 2009.
Format: 27.80 x 23.60 cm, hardcover
Pages: 144 pages, 75 color illustrations
Text by: Ville Lenkkeri
Artist: Ville Lenkkeri
Language: English
ISBN 978-3-7757-2399-2
Hatje Cantz

The artist Ville Lenkkeri made several visits to two Russian towns on Spitzbergen. To him, a now-deserted mining settlement appeared "not as a depressing . . . scar on the Arctic landscape, but as a formerly just and happy commonwealth . . . where competitive hierarchies had been abolished in favor of equality.” The journey became a "personal quest for alternative ways of living,” the place itself "a utopia in many respects, not least for having failed to exist” (Ville Lenkkeri).

Hatje Cantz published Lenkkeri’s debut book, Reality in the Making, in 2006, and the reception was enthusiastic: "If the strength of Finnish photography is in gathering together irony, skillful craftsmanship, humor, and reflection on media, then it has found one of its most talented representatives in Ville Lenkkeri,” wrote PHOTO International.

The Helsinki School New Photography by TaiK

Published by: Hatje Cantz in 2007.
Format: 29,50 x 24,50 cm hardcover
Pages: 232 pages, 187 color illustrations
Edited: University of Art and Design, Helsinki (TaiK)
Texts: Andrea Holzherr, Timothy Persons
Artists: Joonas Ahlava, Joakim Eskildsen, Miklos Gaál, Veli Granö, Ilkka Halso, Nanna Hänninen, Maarit Hohteri, Tiina Itkonen, Ulla Jokisalo, Jan Kaila, Ari Kakkinen, Aino Kannisto, Sanna Kannisto, Sandra Kantanen, Pertti Kekarainen, Ola Kolehmainen, Milja Laurila, Janne Lehtinen, Ville Lenkkeri, Anni Leppälä, Noomi Ljungdell, Niko Luoma, Susanna Majuri, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Jyrki Parantainen, Jorma Puranen, Riitta Päiväläinen, Heli Rekula, Nanna Saarhelo, Pentti Sammallahti, Jari Silomäki, Mikko Sinervo, Marjukka Vainio, Ea Vasko, Pernilla Zetterman
Designed by: Margarethe Hausstätter, Claudia Stein
Language: English
ISBN 978-3-7757-1888-2
http://www.hatjecantz.de/the-helsinki-school-1825-1.html

Based on the success of volume one, the latest installment of The Helsinki School represents one of the most unique approaches to the state of conceptual photography today. Volume two is dedicated to sustaining the dialogue between one generation and another who have either taught, graduated, or attended the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland. It will accompany an exhibition with venues all over the world. This unique, richly illustrated publication, based on a concept by Timothy Persons and Jorma Puranen also looks ahead to the emerging next generation.

Ville Lenkkeri
Reality in the Making

Published by: Hatje Cantz in 2006.
Format: 30.20 x 23.10 cm, hardcover
Pages: 144 pages, 60 color illustrations
Texts by: Harri Laakso, short story by Robert Enoch
Language: English
Out of Print
ISBN 978-3-7757-1880-6
Hatje Cantz

Before Ville Lenkkeri (*1972) began studying photography at the University of Art and Design (TaiK) in Helsinki, he studied film in Prague and also briefly in London. To this day, cinematography and film influence his artistic approach. In an early series titled Movies, the Finnish artist investigated the relationship between cinema and photography by integrating the factor of time. In his latest work complex, The World As We Know It, Lenkkeri employs a cinematic trick: he photographs settings, such as dioramas in natural history museums or murals in waiting rooms, so that his works move inside the disturbing, unfocused zone between reality and fiction. Reality in the Making presents this cycle of works by the young "Helsinki School” photographer, who already enjoys an international reputation.

Die Vierte Generation – The Helsinki School

Published by: PPS Galerie, Hamburg, 2005
Text: Trixi Rossi, Anke Koppe
Artists: Ari Kakkinen, Ville Lenkkeri, Susanna Kekkonen, Jari Silomäki, Maria Lähteenmäki, Wilma Hurskainen, Noomi Ljungdell, Pernilla Zettermann, Tuomo Rainio, Pasi Autio, Joonas Ahlava, Milja Laurila und Ea Vasko.
Exhibition catalogue