Sat 5.8.

Photographer Marja Pirilä presents her multi-layered photographs on the cinema screen and sheds light on the background of her artistic work. Pirilä, who has exhibited around the world, has been developing her "camera obscura" method of photography since the 1990s.

"My photographs take the viewer inside the camera. I shoot with a slow camera obscura method, turning spaces into a camera obscura, a dark room. When light enters the dark space through a small lens aperture, it creates a subliminal image of the outside world and makes everyday reality appear in a new light. The fusion of indoor and outdoor spaces creates a dreamlike, layered third reality, which I record with my camera using long exposures. The driving force behind my work is light and the fascination with it. I have been fascinated by the camera obscura phenomenon for more than three decades and have used it not only to create various photo series but also many three-dimensional camera obscuras together with Petri Nuutinen."

Marja Pirilä graduated in 1986 as a photographer from the University of Art and Design (BA) and as a biologist. University of Helsinki (FM). Pirilä's work has been exhibited widely in Finland and throughout Europe, North and South America and Asia. They are also in several important public and private collections. Pirilä was awarded the State Prize for Photography in 2000, the Pirkanmaa Art Prize in 2010 and the Kordelin Prize in 2020 for her work in developing, creatively using and promoting the camera obscura phenomenon. The latest of his seven books of photographs is the extensive retrospective "Carried by Light" (2014).