Opening today at x-ist Gallery in Istanbul is a new exhibition featuring the photographs of old and new voices from the Helsinki School.

Collected North sees Anni Leppälä, Joakim Eskildsen, Pertti Kekarainen, Sanna Wang, and Sandra Kantanen brought together – equally for their contrasting styles as for how their works introduce a sensibility that grows out of Nordic traditions. There’s also a hefty cultural influence here, ranging from Eskildsen’s exposition of poverty in the US (from a series first published for Time magazine in 2012) to Wang’s portraits of displaced Chinese culture.

Curator Timothy Persons here gives us an insight into a northern school that has, since the early 1990s, been redefining traditional notions of photographic education and an exhibition that lays all this out for the world to see.

Tempe Nakiska: What was the premise of this exhibition?
Timothy Persons: It was to introduce the Helsinki School through a selection of five divergent positions which form parameters of how its known. I chose Anni Leppäläs works primarily for her visual poetry and how she interprets herself through the passage of time. Sandra Kantanens pieces reveal how she conceptualises her relationship with nature by creating her own landscapes through combining multiple images together to form a contained environment. Sandra Wang and Joakim Eskildsen represent two approaches in how to translate different cultural realities while Pertti Kekarainen builds his works out of the various meanings of Space (TILA) by layering them together one perspective on top of another, until it forms his own language on visual sculpture. I chose x-ist as there were the first Turkish Gallery to open a direct dialogue with us in Berlin.

Pertti Kekarainen ‘TILA – Spatial changes’

TN: How did you approach the task of choosing the five photographers to be exhibited? How do they connect to the school?
TP: I chose these five artists for their unique perspectives united by their poetic sensibility. It’s exactly this joint consciousness that defines the Helsinki School as an approach for using the photographic medium as a tool for thought as well as a means for self-reflection.

TN: What is the common thread that runs between them? In what ways does their work, conversely, stand alone? 
TP: Our goal for the past twenty years was to create an environment where ideas could be questioned, challenged and hopefully the skills learned sustain and build an interesting life. The common thread, if there is one, would be to never compromise a good idea and build your work around the 3 c’s: content, content, content.

TN: Can you describe what it is that sets students of the Helsinki School apart from other educational photography institutions around the world?
TP: What sets the Helsinki School approach apart from other educational programs is in our flexibility to find new ways to meet the needs each generation faces. It’s a program that is in a constant flux, teaching how to think and then manage the success that comes with creative sensibility.

TN: In what ways are the photographers featured pushing the boundaries of contemporary photography?
TP: All of the photographers in this exhibition have used the medium to define their own language – a visual poetry that stands on it’s toes to touch it’s sky.

Collected North: Helsinki School of Photography in Istanbul runs until 6th September at x-ist Gallery, 34365, Turkey