Arno Rafael Minkkinen: Two Hundred Seasons

In addition to nominating the finalists for the Photobook Award, the jury awarded an honorable mention to Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s magnificent monograph Minkkinen – Two Hundred Seasons published in 2019. The large-scale photobook brings together a 50 years-worth of lifelong works by the photographer born in Helsinki in 1945, but who has lived his adult life in the United States. The works are characterized by a fascinatingly surreal undertone and the use of one’s own body. Throughout his career Minkkinen has photographed his naked body combined with nature or urban landscape. The book has a high quality in terms of its graphic look, material choices and print quality. For decades, Minkkinen has maintained close contacts with Finland and Finnish photographers. He brought with him a breeze of the international scene to his native country as early as in the 1970s. Minkkinen has been an important, charismatic teacher for many generations of photographers at Aalto University and its predecessor University of Art and Design Helsinki.