PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY HIPPOLYTE
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Opening hours: Tue-Fri: 12–17, Sat–Sun: 12–16

JAN KAILA
Second Death
17 August – 9 September 2007

A walk through a Russian Orthodox or Roman Catholic graveyard is a disturbing experience: the people in the photographs on the gravestones look right at you as if in greeting – here we are! (Jan Kaila)

Jan Kaila's installation Second Death comprises two parts: modified reproductions of photographic portraits from gravestones in St Petersburg and Venice, and a sound piece created in collaboration with Simo Alitalo. In 2006, Kaila photographed portraits of the dead in three graveyards in St. Petersburg and in the San Michele cemetery in Venice. The object of Kaila's interest was not the graveyard setting itself or the tombs, but photographs of the deceased taken while they were still alive.

Jan Kaila recorded about one and a half thousand gravestone portraits. They depict people from different eras and classes, some of whom have died of old age, others in their middle years or youth, still others as children or infants. From the 'archive' thus created, Kaila selected some fifty most interesting shots for his exhibition. His primary aim was not to engage in sociological research, but to create a work or set of works that would demonstrate the monumental poignancy of photography. Kaila has enlarged the pictures and manipulated them in other ways, sometimes to quite an extent, to better bring out the central aesthetic qualities of each individual shot.

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Born in 1957, Jan Kaila lives in Kirkkonummi and works mainly in Helsinki. He has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in Finland and abroad since 1981. In 2007, his work has appeared in group shows held in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Korea.
Up to the mid-1980s, Jan Kaila worked largely in conformity with the traditions of photojournalism and photographic documentarism. Towards the end of the decade, he abandoned his "role of non-interference" and began to stage his photos. The 1990s were also a time of change for Kaila – alongside photographs, he began incorporating also texts, moving images and objects into his exhibitions. Perhaps the most famous of Kaila's projects is the series of works on the eccentric Elis Sinistö that he made in 1985–2004, comprising photographs, videos and object works. Kaila was awarded a Doctorate in Fine Arts in 2002. Since 2004 he has worked as Professor of Artistic Research at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

For more information please contact:
Exhibition co-ordinator Petronella Grönroos, +358 9 612 33 44, firstname.lastname@hippolyte.fi

Jan Kaila: Pietarilainen nainen #1, 2007