The mission of the Finnish Museum of Photography is “to promote and foster Finnish photographic art and photographic culture.” The museum has a challenging double task, as it works both in the field of photographic art and in the field of cultural historical photography. In terms of exhibition and acquisition policies, a museum with such a wide range of activities offers a rich context for contemporary photographic art. Both in exhibition programmes and in acquisitions all decisions strive for a rich understanding of the photographic culture in its widest sense.

The museum is maintained by the Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Photography and its main supporters are the Finnish Ministry of Education and the City of Helsinki. The museum, founded on the initiative of a number of photographic organizations, celebrated its fortieth-anniversary last year, which means that even by international standards Finland was quite quick off the mark in setting up a museum for photography. The photographic exhibitions at New York’s MoMA started in the1930s but most of the European photography museums began much later, in the 1970s and the 1980s.

A lot has changed in forty years, both in the surrounding society and at the Museum of Photography, which today has a permanent staff of fourteen and a huge collection of 3.7 million photographs, including, for example, large press and portrait negative archives. Since the early 1990s it has been located in the Cable Factory, a former industrial building constructed by Nokia, today an impressive cultural centre owned by the City of Helsinki.

In the museum’s exhibition policy contemporary photographic art is in a leading role. Exhibitions are largely based on Finnish photography due to the museum’s role as the national specialist museum, but also because of the unparalleled upswing in contemporary Finnish photography. Never before has there been so much activity and never before have there been so many qualified professional photographic artists with whom the museum would like to collaborate in exhibition projects.

Sometimes the museum has been accused of being too narrow in its exhibition programme and of showing too little international photography. Looking at the museum’s exhibition programme it is apparent that in our contemporary globalized culture it would be natural to increase the number of international exhibitions. Until now the limited resources together with a rich national activity have influenced the exhibition policy, but in the near future, some new measures will be taken to increase the number of shows of foreign photographers.

Working with both emerging and established artists is for us an important guideline in our exhibition policy. In the coming years we are going to have several mid-career shows of the first generation of university-trained photographers but without forgetting the younger generations. The museum considers it essential to support younger photographers by giving them the chance to develop as artists.

Almost all the art museums in Finland became interested in photography in the early 1990s and since then photography shows have been seen all over the country. Many art museums have also started to acquire photographic art. From the point of view of the Finnish Museum of Photography, these ongoing developments have resulted in happily shared responsibilities: more chances for the artists to show their work as well as more purchases for the collections.

Still, in spite of the wide general interest, as a specialist museum with a wide knowledge of many aspects of photography, we believe in giving some extra value to the contemporary photographic scene. We are happy to give space to retrospectives of photographers who started their careers long before the latest boom in photography, and who are still working with traditional black-and-white photography. We are also the only museum in the country having the courage to stage thematic exhibitions in which photographic art is combined with other uses of photography. And in general, as we see it, many photographers enjoy the response of a specialist museum of this kind can give them in their development as artists. We are aspiring to speak the same languages as our contemporary photographic artists.