Nina Korhonen

Lars Tunbjörk Award 2025

Nina Korhonen diligently forges ahead on her own path, with a timeless and deeply personal visual vocabulary. She skilfully portrays human life, whether in her own backyard or on foreign continents. She takes photography deadly seriously – but her images frequently flash with a sense of humour.
Jury’s statement

Nina Korhonen, born in Tampere, Finland in 1961, lives and works in Stockholm. Ever since her time as a student at Nordens Fotoskola (1987–90) she has displayed a uniquely personal style where her family, friends and locations make up subjects through which she explores identity and relationships, with warmth and an eye for the humourous.

This exhibition consists of photographs from three of Korhonens serial works - each one previously released as a book. This is the first time these projects are shown together, under the heading Trilogy. As such, they form a continuous story, stretching across decades and continents – a form of frieze portraying the women in the artist’s life.

Äldre kvinna sitter på rosa jacka på strand framför höghus.

Nina Korhonen, Coney Island. Anna, Amerikan mummu, 1993-99

The oldest series, Minne. Muisto. Memory., is made up of black and white photographs taken in Finland between 1987 and 1995. Here, the gaze of the child meets the gravity of adult life, in fragments characterised by the honing in on details and moments, which mimics the very function of remembering.

Anna Amerikan mummu from 1993–99 is perhaps Korhonen’s most internationally renowned work. In it she documents the daily life of her grandmother in the US. In the 1950s, after Anna was let go from her work in the textile industry in Tampere, she took a courageous step into the unknown in order to follow her dream of living in America. Knowing only a few words of English, she left Finland for the States and found a job as a live-in cook. For the rest of her life Anna then divided her time between Finland, New York and Florida. In these images, a subtle prosaic comedy plays off against the grand feat of independently shaping one’s own life.

Tre kvinnor i olika åldrar sitter bredvid varandra i ett vardagsrum.

Anna, me and mother, Lake Worth, Florida. Rewind the Photographs, 1999.

If the previous two series gravitate around well defined subjects or locations, then REWIND the Photographs offers up a more kaleidoscopic narrative. Korhonen retraces her steps through photographs, attempting to grasp the crucial turning points and relations that make up a life. Through sorrows, love and loss we revisit characters in a series of solemn images from across the world. The photographer herself repeatedly steps into the frame and becomes the node around which these generational fates circle.

Korhonen has exhibited internationally, including in Latvia, Georgia, Japan, France and USA. In Sweden she has had solo exhibitions in, amongst other institutions: Västerbottens Museum, Hallands Konstmuseum, Virserums Konsthall, and Abecita.

Blå utställningsvägg med svartvita foton på

Gråutställningsvägg med foton i rad på och en bok i monter i förgrunden.

She is represented in the collections of Library of Congress (Washington DC), Moderna Museet, Nordiska Museet, Tampere Art Collections, the Hasselblad Foundation, and more. Awards she has received include K.W. Gullers Photography Stipend of 2006, and Svenska Fotografernas Förbund’s award for Best Photography Book of 2004.

Korhonen has published the books: Minne.Muisto.Memory. (1997), Anna Amerikan mummu (2004), REWIND the Photographs (2009), La Cuerda (2013), Cahier Nr.3 (2013), European Eyes on Japan (2014), Monkey to Monkey (2018), Happy/Brooklyn 1988–93 (2019), and Handmade (2022).

Installation photos: Hendrik Zeitler.