Helsinki Photo Festival presents InsideOut
Helsinki Photo Festival ry initiates participatory art project in collaboration with the InsideOut project.
Photography students of two Finnish schools in Helsinki and Pietersaari are helping to develop the Inside Out group action drawing attention to a taboo issue seldom discussed in public to advocate change and start a conversation to strengthen the Finnish community.
Title We are no different, we are all Finnish!
Statement We believe through this project we can break through language barriers reaching all Finns whether Swedish or Finnish speaking. We are the same and equal, regardless of background or language.
Background Finland is through historic events a country divided into a number of language groups. The main two language groups Finnish and Swedish are known as the official languages. Finnish, is spoken by the majority of Finns, and Swedish, is spoken by the minority of Finns. These two groups coexist for at least a hundred years living next to each other in their own environments and language mainly separates them from their child- to adulthood. These circumstances epically have led these two groups to misunderstand each other and often induce racism-related issues, envy, hate and despise. Through our project in collaboration with Inside Out, we want to bridge and bring together these two groups through photography to realise there is no difference between the latter two.
Intention We want to hear people’s voices and let them express their emotions through portrait photography without any fear of retaliation, censorship or sanction. Our statement for the Finnish society is simple: We are all equal, regardless of the language we speak, we are all Finns to be showcased as a street art exhibition.