Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Arno Rafael Minkkinen, 2011
Born (1945-06-04) 4 June 1945 (age 78)
Helsinki, Finland
Alma materWagner College
Rhode Island School of Design
OccupationPhotographer
HonoursOrder of the Lion of Finland (Knight, First Class)

Arno Rafael Minkkinen (born 4 June 1945)[1] is a Finnish-American photographer who works in the United States.

Published and exhibited worldwide, Minkkinen's work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Finnish Museum of Photography.[2]

Seven solo monographs on his work have been published: Frostbite (1978), Waterline (1994, winner of the 25th Rencontres d'Arles Book Prize), Body Land (1999), SAGA: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, 35 Years of Photographs (2005), Homework: The Finnish Photographs (2008), Swimming in the Air (2009), and Balanced Equation (2010).[3] The retrospective survey SAGA premiered at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, in 2005. The 120-print retrospective toured to Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Italy, China, and Canada.[4]

Minkkinen was made a Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland of the first class by the Finnish government in 1992, and awarded the Finnish State Art Prize in Photography in 2006.[2]

Early life and education

Minkkinen was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1951.[5] He graduated from Wagner College with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and began taking self-portraits in 1971, while working as an advertising copywriter on Madison Avenue in New York.[6] He later studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Rhode Island School of Design and earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in photography in 1974.[7]

Career

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.[8]

Teaching activities

Minkkinen is a professor of art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and also serves as lecturer at Aalto University of Art & Design Helsinki. Earlier in his teaching career he served as assistant professor at M.I.T., Visiting Artist at Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts (Philadelphia)), the École d'Arts Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland, and as graduate faculty at Maine Media College in Rockport, Maine.[9]

Since joining UMass Lowell in 1987, Minkkinen has taken students to Finland and Russia (1988), and Czechoslovakia (1989). In 1996, in a collaborative UMass Lowell/Lahti Institute of Design (Lahti, Finland) exchange program called Spirit Level, thirty Finnish, American, and Swiss students toured through Finland, Russia, and Eastern Europe for three weeks with Minkkinen and photo department head at Lahti, Timo Laaksonen. Among the students at the time was Mark Eshbaugh who later became an adjunct professor at UMass Lowell. Seven years after the first Spirit Level, together with Timo Laaksonen and Mark Eshbaugh a professor at Umass Lowell at that time, Tuscany in Italy (2003) and Oaxaca, Mexico (2007) were added to the program.[10] Later Minkinnen organized collaborations with Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland and the Foundation Studio Marangoni in Florence, Italy (2010) as well as the Bilder Nordic School of Photography in Oslo and the École Supérieure d'Arts & Medias de Caen/Cherbourg in France (2012) for an American Road Trip to the studio farmlands of American photographer Sally Mann.[11][12] The first three workshops resulted in the publication of a book commemorating those first three experiences.[13]

Minkkinen has taught workshops worldwide, particularly at the Maine Photographic Workshops (now Maine Media Workshops), Maine Media College (as part of the graduate faculty), the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Anderson Ranch in Colorado, Santa Fe Workshops in New Mexico, the Friends of Photography in Carmel, California, and in Europe at the Rencontres d'Arles in Arles, France, the Toscana Photographic Workshops in Tuscany, Italy, as well as workshop programs in Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, and China. Minkkinen served a second four-year term as national board member of the Society of Photographic Education (2008 to 2016).[14]

Recent work

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. Filming was planned in Finnish Karelia and Finntown, Brooklyn. The demo preview of The Rain House was screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in connection with the Dance Films Association's 41st Dance on Camera Festival (2013).[15] As of 2021 the film was in the making.[16]

Publications

Monographs and curated anthologies

Publications with contributions by Minkkinen

Critical writings, essays and fiction

Film and television

Awards

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Solo exhibitions

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Collections

Minkkinen's work is held in the following permanent collections:

References

  1. ^ "ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN" (PDF). Brussels: Galerie Valérie Bach. Retrieved August 11, 2022.
  2. ^ a b Arts and Ideas, Spring 2012 ed., Umass Lowell Center for Arts and Ideas, p. 12
  3. ^ Arno Rafael Minkkinen Catalogue
  4. ^ Saga: The Journey Of Arno Rafael Minkkinen Archived February 15, 2013, at archive.today
  5. ^ Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Frostbite (New York: Morgan & Morgan, 1978; ISBN 978-0-87100-143-6).
  6. ^ Baring All: the Self-Portraits of Arno Rafael Minkkinen | Interviews de photographes et séries photographiques Archived July 31, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ The Photo Book (London: Phaidon, 1997; ISBN 978-0-7148-3634-8), p.317.
  8. ^ Naomi Rosenblum, The World History of Photography 3rd ed. (New York: Abbeville, 1997; ISBN 978-0-7892-0028-0), p.565.
  9. ^ a b Caleb Daniloff, "Arno Minkkinen: Naked, Cold, and On Camera", BU Today, February 28, 2008.
  10. ^ "Arno Rafael Minkkinen".
  11. ^ Special Report: Positive Role Models
  12. ^ a b "Longtime Art Prof Brings Home His Vision". Archived from the original on 2013-10-16. Retrieved 2013-01-31.
  13. ^ Spirit Level (Westford, MA: RMR Press, 2008; ISBN 978-0-615-18229-2).
  14. ^ Society for Photographic Education
  15. ^ FSLC and Dance Films Association announce the 41st edition of DANCE ON CAMERA, Feb 1-5 | Filmlinc.com | Film Society of Lincoln Center
  16. ^ Bacquet, Emmanuel (2021). "Still Not There: An interview with Arno Rafael Minkkinen". The Darkroom Rumour. Retrieved 2022-08-23.
  17. ^ Balanced/Equation by Arno Rafael Minkkinen - Lodima Press Portfolio Books Archived March 1, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Arno Rafael Minkkinen Catalogue
  19. ^ a b still not there/creative documentary
  20. ^ a b c Arno Rafael Minkkinen
  21. ^ http://www.barryfriedmanltd.com/artists/minkkinen_press.html?n=Arno%20Rafael%20Minkkinen&t=press[dead link]
  22. ^ "Museum's collections". www.valokuvataiteenmuseo.fi. 31 March 2017. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  23. ^ "Collections Search". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved 2019-01-15.

External links

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