On April 2, photography students and hobbyists gathered in one of Bragg’s dark classrooms to learn the inspiration and process behind Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s photography. As an accomplished photographer with a 55 year career, Minkkinen’s work is currently on display at MTSU’s Baldwin Photographic Gallery.
Students huddled in the upholstered seats of Bragg 103 as the lights dimmed and Minkkinen stood behind a podium, beginning a presentation encompassing his career. His black-and-white self-portraits flickered across the projector screen, paired with classical music.
“This is Tuesday, of a five-day workshop,” Minkkinen said, showing his early photography from a course with Mark Goodman. “He tells me, you know, they might give you your money back. He was smoking weed and said, take a day off.”
Minkkinen’s day off brought him one of his first self-portraits, and the basis for the rest of his career. Standing naked before a mirror, Minkkinen saw himself in “almost like a grave.”
“It didn’t take long from that picture to suddenly start the trail that construed anything I might have done in South Carolina a few days ago,” Minkkinen said.
He rarely goes a day without practicing his photography.
“Wherever I go, I’m all these pictures,” Minkkinen said. “I will have the cameras.”
With shooting locations in four continents, including a considerable amount of work in China and South America, Minkkinen’s self-portraiture has taken him around the globe. He has completed over 100 solo shows and 200 group exhibitions. However, one of the focuses of his work is his life in America and Finland, as he immigrated to America when he was six years old.
While projecting a photograph of his son, Minkkinen alluded to his own life as a Finnish American immigrant.
“This was after we came back from Finland and he was still speaking Finnish,” Minkkinen said. “So, you look at his eyes and his head, think about him as knowing how to speak Finnish. And now he can’t speak it, because there’s no use for it.”
Minkkinen’s latest project is a film, focusing on a Finnish American boy struggling with art, love and his parent’s expectations. The film is “80 percent fact and 80 percent fiction.” The film is still in pre-production and looking for funding.
He joked he would invite Britney Spears to work on the film, as she shared his photograph Foster’s Pond [writing on water] while working on her memoir. Her Instagram post featuring Minkkinen’s work received over 500,000 likes.
Minkkinen’s career has spanned over five decades, and he’s inching toward his eightieth birthday in June.
“I turn 80 in June, and I’m looking forward to it,” Minkkinen said. “The way to spell it is the number 8-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y. Because it looks like a B.”
Minkkinen’s photography primarily features himself as the subject, but he also compiles his photography in what he calls “the power of three triptychs,” where he compares three unrelated photographs, and can find the similarities.
“I like seeing how they can relate to each other,” Minkkinen said. “How they work together, put together they work. Because something carries on the sand and the shapes and such. But I never do that when I photograph it. I look at this later on.”
Minkkinen spoke for about 90 minutes before a reception began upstairs in the Baldwin Photographic Gallery. There, individuals gathered with cheese and fruit plates while strolling through the gallery, observing the world through Minkkinen’s eyes.
Whether it be through subject Maija-Kaarina swimming through a lake in Sysmä, Finland, or Minkkinen on Mt. Mitchell in Burnsville, North Carolina, there is a single through line.
“Art is risk made visible,” Minkkinen said. “And courage is fear made invisible.”
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