“A continuation of Minkkinen’s remarkable self-portraits.”

—Lodima Press

It is all about chance discoveries, handshakes with good fortune, and that unquenchable desire to express the pleasure of being alive in the natural world as it was meant to exist."

—Arno Rafael Minkkinen

A Finnish American photographer, writer, and educator, ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN developed a profound love for photography as an advertising copywriter. “What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera” (a line he wrote for Minolta cameras) became his artistic credo as a graduate student at Rhode Island School of Design studying with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Forty years later, his self-portraits continue to be made simply using single-negative exposures with no manipulation in the camera or the darkroom.

Five monographs have been published to date: Frostbite (Morgan & Morgan, 1978); Waterline (Marval, Otava, and Aperture); Body Land (Motta, 1997); SAGA: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen (Chronicle Books, 2005); and Homework: The Finnish Photographs (Like Publishing, 2008). Published and exhibited worldwide, his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, among many others. Minkkinen was knighted by the Finnish Government in 1992 and holds the position of Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Docent at Aalto University School of Art & Design Helsinki.