Culture, EU – Baltic States, Forum, Latvia

The show is a story and a tribute to Nina Korhonen`s beloved grandmother Anna. The photographs have been taken in New York and Lake Worth, Florida between 1993-1999. The photographs are close to everydaylife, sensual and warm – with lot of humour. The exhibition is a tribute to an elderly woman who seeked a different life and found it.

The journey to America had been grandmother’s big dream since she was eight years old and promised to follow her aunt to the great “Wonderland”. Anna was 40 years old and it was a bad time in Finland and impossible to find a job. Her husband Kalle had travelled as the chief engineer to all the great ports of the world, now he thought that it was his turn to stay at home. In spring 1959, Anna realized her life’s dream and alone, with couple of hundred dollars and no special skills in the English language, she took the airplane to New York. She lived in Brooklyn and worked as a cook in a wealthy family in upper Manhattan. Anna flew to Tampere, Finland every summer and Kalle flew to her in New York every winter. When Kalle died in 1985, Anna gave Nina his camera. A few years later when she found old colour photographs from their trips, she decided to keep portraying Anna in her own way. She visited Anna regularly for two, three weeks at the time and photographed her in her home and favourite places. Anna called Nina her “back-scrubber” and she listened Anna’s stories and learnt to her “Amerikan mummu”.

Anna got 40 years in America. She died from cancer, 83 years old. For the last six years, she had the beloved sunlight all year round. She travelled between her three homes – spring and autumn in New York, summer in Finland and winter in Florida. It was exactly as she had dreamt it would be.

Nina Korhonen was born in Finland in 1961. Since the 1980’s she has lived and worked in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied photography at the end of 80’s at Nordens Photography School in Sweden. Korhonen has had solo exhibitions at the Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Photography Center Rosfoto of the Russian Federation Ministry of Culture in Saint Petersburg, Centre Culturel Suedois, Paris, France, and at many exhibition halls and galleries in Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and elsewhere.