Arno Rafael Minkkinen - 2006
The body as a means of expression
“I consider myself a documentary photographer. I treat the medium the same way a street shooter does. What happens in front of my camera happens in reality. There are no double exposures, no digital manipulations,” explains Arno Rafael Minkkinen.
His style is surrealist and surprising but at the same time direct and striking. “I look at the world through the mind. What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera.” He wrote this as a copywriter for a camera campaign before becoming a photographer.
Arno Rafael Minkkinen was born with a serious disability and went through major surgery when only twelve months old. When he was six his family moved from Helsinki, Finland, to live in New York. In 1971 he graduated in English Literature, did a photography course and started to study photography. This was also the year in which he shot his first self portrait. He uses his own body as motive and for the last thirty years he has been engaged with the single idea of using his own body as a means of expressing our relationship to nature.
“Art is risk made visible” is another line he wrote, much later in life when he “understood better just how difficult art could be,” he says.
In addition to his photography he worked for many years as a copywriter for different advertising firms in the United States.
In 1975 he was invited to lecture at the University Of Industrial Art Of Helsinki. He stayed in his country of origin for two years and, travelling a lot to both Western and Eastern Europe with his American wife. He also visited the Soviet Union and Karelen. When they returned to New York, Minkkinen resumed his career as a copywriter. In 1977 he was appointed assistant-professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His first book “Frostbite” was published by Morgan & Morgan in 1978.
His unique body art has been on show all over the world, making its debut in 1972 in Soho Photo Gallery in New York. In recent years Minkkinen has mainly presented his pictures in American galleries.
Born 1945 i Helsinki.
Moved to the United States in 1951
1967: Bachelor of Art in English Literature at the Wagner College, Staten Island, New York
1978: Book: Frostbite published
1983: Invited by Lucien Clergue to present “Fantastic Photography in Europe” at the international photography in Arles and gives his first workshop there.
1992: Becomes docent in photography at the University of Helsinki
1994: Book: Waterline published
1995: Solo Exhibition in Houk Friedman Gallery, New York
1997: Book: Body Land published
2005: Exhibitions at Cordova Museums and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Robert Klein Gallery, Boston, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York and Karl Drerup Art Gallery, Plymouth, New Hampshire, all in the States.