HELSINKI AND CAMERA OBSCURA

Tuesday 8th June 2010

Today was somewhat of a messy day as I spent quite a bit of time trying to
replace a missing part on my Sony DSLR. Last night I discovered that I had lost
the rubber mounting from around the view finder. Although I went back to a
couple places and looked around the ground, I could not find it.
So the task was to try and replace it. After all if I couldn't do that here then
I would be without it for perhaps the rest of the trip.

The hostel reception suggested I go to Strongmans store as they have everything.
So I did and they didn't. They did have an interesting electronics department in
the basement or at least in floor -1, they also had -2 level as well. I did get
the assistant to suggest where else to look and he told me where the SONY
Centre was. But despite walking up and down the street I could not find the
'campa centre'. Well in the end I asked in another electronics store and found
that I had to find the largest H and M store which was in the 'KAMPA Gallery'.
And sure enough there was a sign going vertically, not large, and in flowing
hand writing. But still not an excuse to have missed it. I think the H and M
had put me off.

Well, SONY did not have the part and it would take a week to get in. So I asked
for their recommendation of where to go next. So the gave me the name of the
photo pro store and I got them to write it and the building's name down for me.
That way I should be looking for the correct wording. I did know the general
location as it was near the railway station and post office.

Well I found this fantastic photo pro shop with all sorts of interesting
equipment. Several stedicam units for lower end professional video cameras, of
which they had six different SONY models on display. The assistant said that no
way would they have that, this is CANON country and to be fair they did have an
awful lot of Canon cameras on display. Fortunately I did not go straight out
and wandered around having a general look. While I was doing this he called out
that on second thoughts he may have something that would suit. In a small corner
display case was a range of SONY bits and pieces including three rubber
viewfinder pieces. He was certain that they would not be the right ones but
offered to try one on my camera. It fitted perfectly even though its Internet
listing did not indicate it would. So I happily paid out the 19 euros for the
small piece of molded shaped rubber.

I went along a few shops to Wayne's Coffee and had one to celebrate. Not that it
is very good coffee mind you, it was just close and I needed to sit down for a
while.

Through all of this I missed getting to the lunchtime organ concert I had
planned to go to. But I did have the camera complete again.

Now I had to find my way to the Museum of Photography, which was out a bit in
the suburbs. Bus 15 was the number I wanted. However I could only find 15V and
the Finnish speaking driver indicated he did not actually go very close to the
museum. I knew that from the route map I have but I could not get from him
where to get a bus 15.

So in the end I took the Metro even though I knew it would involve a walk of
about 6-8 blocks. OK the metro as fast and only two stops to the museum area.
That was actually the end of the line as well so no chance of missing the
station. It was a nice clean and modern metro system with long steep escalators
to take you way down. It reminded me of the ones I have been on built by the
Russians in Prague.

I walked down the road to the museum passing modern tall office buildings. The
museum is located in a very large old cable making factory building. It seems
to have been converted into an art space a bit like the Tate Gallery in London
converted an old power station. The museum only takes up a small corner of the
total building.
Approaching it I noticed a cargo container converted into a camera obscura. You
could go inside through a little passage and look at the outside being
projected upside down on the wall. This camera obscura did use a lens although
the original ones just used a pin hole. I chatted to the young woman assistant
who happened to mention that the museum was closed as they were installing a
new exhibition for an opening tonight.

I was not impressed to have come so far and not get in. So the assistant ran
across to the museum and discussed it with the curator and the museum manager
and the outcome was that they let me in for a private wander around while the
final installation was going on. Everyone seemed more than happy about it.
The main exhibition was 'After Sauna Art'
In the 1970's a group of photographic 'dissidents' form an informal network
which became known as the Harvesters. They were a pretty diverse group actually
and some just documented, some aimed at art photography and others just played
around with the camera. They stage set ups. For example one photographer and
his partner staged a variety of mock wedding photographs and mock family
portraits. One did a whole series around a snail he named 'Silent'.
It was interesting and did reflect a period of time.

The next exhibition was 'Peoplein the Summer Night' and it showed the work of a
score or more photgraphers. This looked at the cliches of nationality, the
strong women and the frail men in the nighless night as the brochure said. One
woman had photographed her grandparents over several years including shots in
the sauna together. Another looked at the evidence of abuse in teenagers and
others. One photographer had a series of garden and park photographs where
someone in the photo was kneeing or sitting or working close to ground level.

In one corner they were screening a large series of 1950's colour slides of
sunsets and summer night skies. This series had been done by an amateur
photographer.

A final small collection in a side room centred on the abuse of children and
teenagers. It was designed to shock as apparently in Finland child abuse is not
seen as seriously as it would be in say, New Zealand.

Out again and I went across to the camera obscura to thank the young woman. She
had just graduated last week with a B.FA(Photography). She hopes to carry on
with a masters. She had a friend with her who is a Master of Photography
graduate. This woman, Heidi had constructed six or so small camera obscuras
which were lying around the container. One was made from a baby's pram, another
with two lenses from a small suitcase. With the pram you had a hood to pull over
yourself a bit like the old photographers used to do. The suitcase had a cut out
area that you put your forehead into. There was one made out of a bucket and
another out of a tube. What she had done was to place a ground glass type of
screen in the pram and bucket which you viewed the images on. Highly
imaginative. She also has a floating sauna made into a camera obscura which
will be on display in the harbour for three weeks during July.

I went down the building for a cup of coffee and then discovered more
exhibitions. First was work by senior artists which I thought would be old age
pensioners, but which actually turned out to be by experienced artists who had
been at the game for many years. In the next room was a exhibition by a group
of potters. I talked to eh lady at the door who turned out to be one of the
artists doing her turn as guard. She had made a large swing out of a mixture of
found porcelain objects and her own firings. The whole structure reached up to
the high ceiling which had to be about 12 feet or 3 to 4 metres high. I asked
how many came to view and she said about 20 a day on average.

So perhaps I am not the only person who found the Cable Factory a hard place to
get to.

A tram ran past the factory but it did not go into the inner city centre. I
caught it however, to save walking to the metro station.

Back in town my plan was to come out of the metro cross the road and catch tram
3T down to the free concert stage which I had been at last evening. Well 3B
came along and I knew that the route sort of went in the same direction.
However, this 3B was coming away from the harbour so I went for a ride on it
seeing new parts of the city. I had worked out that it was the wrong direction,
but there was no hurry. I finally got off and caught one in the opposite
direction back to the railway station, which is where I had started from. In a
moment a 3T came along and I was off to the concert.

This time it was an elderly country rock singer who I think was more rock than
country. He was good but is drummer was even better in my opinion. I do think
they were overloading their speaker system and causing distortion, which annoys
me but not it would appear, anyone else.
The singer was obviously well know locally and seemed to have a fan club in
attendance who called out support and requests through the show. There was a
good crowd standing around, mostly men I thought, but this may have been caused
by the several nearby bars.

After the concert I caught a 3B tram and rode it on a loop away down the harbour
edge before it turned and finally ended up passing the railway station. I passed
some very wealthy looking mansions during part of this trip. They did seem to
tend to be embassies.

From the station I walked a block to get to tram 4 route and a ride back to the
hostel. I gave I and had a hostel cooked meal. This was a very nicely done
hamburger with which I had a glass of pear cider on ice. I must say, this being
my first drop of pear cider that the taste was very pleasant and a little sweet.
I would have it again.