PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY HIPPOLYTE
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue-Fri 12-17, Sat-Sun 12-16

4–27 November 2011
IIKKA TOLONEN
The End

The End is a photographic work about living and dying. It is a story of how, in spite of a passionate will to live, one ultimately must resign to and face death.

My father contracted cancer for the first time in 2004. The cause of the intense abdominal pains was a malignant tumour in the large intestine. After an operation and a heavy regimen of medication, the cancer was finally under control and my father could once again live life to the full. Until in autumn 2008 the stomach pains returned. The diagnosis was recurrence of cancer in the abdominal cavity. The tumour could not be removed surgically, and the treatment was extremely heavy medication.

Despite the medication, my father’s pains worsened and his health deteriorated. Time passed in the garden, where he spent his last summer sitting in an armchair in the shade of an apple tree.

When care at home became impossible, he was moved to the Terhokoti hospice which specialises in the terminal care of cancer patients. He had been promised a few weeks at the most. The very first night in the hospice his condition collapsed and the family was summoned immediately. My father was in terminal care for three days.

He died on 5 September 2009 at two in the morning.

In the series The End, I process my father’s death and reassemble the pieces of my life. Although his death did not come as a surprise, recovering from it has been a more difficult process than I expected. My father’s death marked the end of an era in my own life. And the beginning of a new one.

Iikka Tolonen

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For more information and press images, please contact:
Petronella Grönroos, exhibition co-ordinator / Photgraphic Gallery Hippolyte +358 9-612 33 44, firstname.lastname@hippolyte.fi

Iikka Tolonen, 2009