works
Magi Viljanen has worked as a photographer and visual artist since the early 1980s. Her work includes photographic series and exhibitions, installations, books, films and other image-based projects, created during decades of work and travel in Finland and abroad.
Some projects have developed over many years, returning to the same people and places; others grew from particular journeys, encounters or commissions. Together, the works collected here trace a practice that has moved between photography, visual art, publishing and film for more than four decades.
Alongside selected works, Magi shares her own recollections and reflections on the people, places and circumstances behind them.
Ram Ram Ludia
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki, Finland · 2009
VIEW WORK
“Ram Ram is my life’s work, the story of a village whose life has become part of my own.”
Women
PHOTO EXHIBITION
Helsinki, Finland and Maputo, Mozambique · 2005
VIEW WORK
“Hardly anyone would have agreed to photograph an entire exhibition and a book in just four weeks, travelling across a country whose infrastructure lay in ruins and taking time to meet the women along the way.
I said yes. It became one of the finest journeys of my life, with shooting days stretching from sunrise until well past midnight.”
KUTCH
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki / Karjaa, Finland · 1996 / 1998
VIEW WORK
“I asked an Indian friend about villages where I might go to photograph. He mentioned one in the border zone with Pakistan: no English, no toilets, not even clean water.
“That’s exactly where I want to go!” I replied.”
Ilkka - the boy calendar
PHOTO EXHIBITION & CALENDAR
Helsinki, Finland · 1999
VIEW WORK
“Of all my friends, Ilkka is by far the most magnificent: fiercely intelligent, courageous, passionate and big-hearted.
With the splendid self-confidence of a mature man, he asked me to photograph him for a pin-up calendar. With the manic energy of a psychiatrist, we shot the whole thing in one day, on film of course.“
Bombay Circus
PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIO
Helsinki · 1996
VIEW WORK
“This small series would never have existed if an airport official in Bombay hadn’t stolen the films I had shot over several months.
All that remained from the journey were a few poorly developed strips of negatives. In desperation, I began making photographs from what was left: circus clowns, acrobats and snake children.”
Mirror 17+5
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki, Finland · 1996
VIEW WORK
“I had forgotten that I had promised an exhibition. When the gallery called, I was devastated by grief and had no idea what I could show.
I decided to photograph everyone who walked into my studio. The photographs were brutally awful, and I understood something essential: every photograph I make is also a self-portrait.”
Anno Illusionis
PHOTO-BASED INSTALLATION
Helsinki and Sammatti, Finland · 1993
VIEW WORK
“I made this long before Photoshop, so the photographs are unmanipulated. To create the image of walking on water, we rowed around the archipelago for a week looking for the right place. On the final morning, we found the perfect rock just beneath the waterline.
I told my husband to stand on it wrapped in a sheet. We got the photograph, and almost forgot to bring my husband back from the rock.”
On The Streets of Ahmedabad
SLIDESHOW / PHOTO SERIES
On Social Media · 2020
VIEW WORK
“For decades, the chaos of India’s streets has surged before my camera. I tried to make sense of it by using a studio backdrop to separate people from their surroundings.
But something interesting was always happening just beyond the backdrop. So I widened the frame again.”
LIFE IS MORE WONDROUS THAN WONDERS
TRAVEL DIARY
Ahmedabad, India · October 2016
READ
“The Bollywood dancers surrounded by a fireworks display of special effects were spectacular. But after a real village wedding and encounters with real people, the plastic diamonds and laser beams inevitably seemed rather pale by comparison.”
— Excerpt from the travel diary
kastemaljani viimeiset rippeet
BOOK OF COLLECTED WRITINGS · 2023
VIEW BOOK
“Perhaps there is no time.
Perhaps there is no death.
Still, if I could choose,
I would look a hunting tiger in the eyes
until my final breath…”
— Excerpt from the book
KAUNIISTI HYMYILEVÄ SIELU
SHORT STORY IN FINNISH
READ
“At that moment, the Messenger remembered the tree where the angels dozed upon its branches. Whenever a child was born, an angel would spread its wings and fly down into the world.”
— Excerpt from the story