Ari Jaaksi

Photo Exhibition “Hämeenkatu”, 7.1-6.2 2023, in galleria Nykyaika, Kauppakatu 14, Tampere, Finland

Hämeenkatu is the main street of my hometown, Tampere. It is a byproduct of the 1865 fire after which a new wider road was created as a fire barrier. Recently Hämeenkatu has seen a major transformation becoming even more pictorial. It has a great perspective and now without cars, provides an exciting city view. It feels like time on Hämeenkatu has stopped, and that is exactly what I wanted to photograph.

I shoot on film and print silver gelatin prints. I work a lot with software and high-tech, and analog photography provides a marvelous counterpoint to that. It is thus important for me that the handmade process shows in the final images.

I took these pictures with old Rolleiflex, Hasselblad, and Graflex medium and large format cameras, and printed them on fiber-based photo paper. In my prints, I wanted to capture the echoes of old Tampere, the smell of fresh snow, and the atmosphere of a still relatively small country town. 

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Ari Jaaksi is a photo artist from Tampere, Finland. He received his Ph.D. in Software Engineering from the University of Technology, Tampere, lived a decade in the US, and moved back to his hometown a few years ago. Ari has a long international career as a high-tech executive, but as a photo artist, he is a more recent discovery. Hämeenkatu is his fourth solo exhibition.