Marja Pirilä

Light and Darkness
camera obscura projects
01.09.–22.9.2018

Marja Pirilä, Finland

Welcome: Vernissage / Opening: Friday 31.8.2018 at 7pm |

Open on Sunday 02.09.2018 from 2-6pm

Ausstellungsdauer / Exhibition open: 01.09. –22.9. 2018 |
Öffnungszeiten/ Opening hours: Wed-Sa 3-7pm |

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed


To photograph in the dark. To invite the light in. Holes and lenses in the darkened windows. The world upside down, camera obscura. To be exposed to light and reflections. To photograph with a camera inside a camera. Where the light falls, there is the reflection: on floor, ceiling, walls, furniture, skin, clothes, notebooks. Light notes.

Camera obscura is for me a method by which to survey the living environment and mental landscapes, to summon subconscious feelings into the light of day. When the space transforms into a ”dark room” it conjures up the core and magic of photography again and again. That is when I feel most powerfully that I am working with the light.

In the exhibition there are photographs from my four camera obscura series: “Interior/Exterior” 1996–, “Speaking House” 2006, “Milavida” 2012–2013 and “In Strindberg´s Rooms” 2017. In addition to the photographs there are three-dimensional “Tin Can camera obscuras”, a collaboration with photographer Petri Nuutinen and an artist book with a text written by PhD Päivi Mehtonen.


Photographic artist Marja Pirilä (b. 1957 in Rovaniemi, Finland) has been specialising in the camera obscura technique since the 1990s. Pirilä graduated as a photographer from the University of Art and Design, Helsinki in 1986, and the same year, a biologist (M.Sc.) from the University of Helsinki. Her works have been shown in various exhibitions in Europe, the Americas and Asia and her work is
included in several significant public and private collections. Pirilä was awarded the State Prize for Photographic Art in 2000, and her retrospective photography book Carried by Light, a was published in 2014.

http://www.marjapirila.com/