“Art risk made visible”

Mariah Micare
Background
● Arno Minkkinen is a Finnish American
photographer
● Noted for his unmanipulated nude self-portraits
in the landscape
● Finnish-American photographer
● Born in Helsinki, Finland in 1945 and emigrated
to the United States in 1951
● Graduate of Wagner College with a Bachelor of
Arts in English Literature
● Began taking self-portraits in 1971
● Seven solo monographs on his work have been
published
● Studying later with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Rhode
Island School of Design, he earned his Master of Fine Arts
degree in photography in 1974.
● Over the past four decades, Minkkinen has been engaged as a
teacher, curator, and writer while continuing to devote his
photographic research and energies to the self-portrait:
unmanipulated images of the human figure in the natural
landscape
● Currently he is Professor of Art at the University of
Massachusetts, Lowell. He is also docent and visiting professor
at the University of Art & Design Helsinki and École d’Art
Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland.
Work

● Minkkinen uses his nude form to play

with his surroundings in visually
stimulating way
● His shots exude a strong
understanding of the environment and
acute sense of shapes and patterns
that define a landscape
● Minkkinen plays with elemental attributes
like water's reflective nature to further
entertain the viewer
The trees' mirrored silhouette would go
unnoticed without Minkkinen's cleverly
inserted fist giving the impression of a
hand holding a bouquet
Interests ● Arno’s work simply builds on the psychological foundations laid
by the surrealist movement
● The surrealist movement
○ A big deal out of the art of the subconscious, that we all have this very
personal and very special narrative trapped in our minds
○ Championed reason and individualism
○ Suppressed the superior qualities of the irrational, unconscious mind
● “What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera”
was the turning-point headline he wrote in 1970
● Since 2009, Minkkinen has developed a growing interest in
feature filmmaking and screenwriting
● In 2010, he received a first round of support from the Finnish
Film Foundation for a screenplay he had written and will be
directing
 Methods
● His methods are exploring the relationship
between the body and the environment
● His photographs inhabit the space between
self-portraiture and landscape photography
● His unorthodox, black-and-white
self-portraits feature stark nature scenes
interpolated with isolated elements of his
nude body
● His images emit a timeless, surreal quality;
his body appears like a natural feature of the
scenery
● “There is no age to the picture when it is just the
landscape and the body” -Arno Minkkinen
 ● Loewe is a perfume and one of it’s
strongest campaigns entitled ‘Beyond
The Skin’ was shot by Minkkinen
● His portraits encompassed the ideas of
intimacy, purity, beauty and
astonishment, in pursuit of conveying
this empowered idea of reinterpretation
● Minkkinen drew creative inspiration for
his photographs from botanical images
● Images embodying the characteristics of
texture and contrast thus marking an
artistic line for future artists who
collaborate in the image renewal of
Loewe perfumes
● At the forefront of the campaign directed
by Minkkinen is the natural concept of
https://vimeo.com/277255679 human skin.
Imitation
Likeness
Sources
https://mymodernmet.com/arno-rafael-minkkinen-photography/

http://www.arno-rafael-minkkinen.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Rafael_Minkkinen

http://www.houkgallery.com/artists/arno-rafael-minkkinen?view=slider#5

https://www.artsy.net/artist/arno-rafael-minkkinen-1