Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish-American photographer and Emeritus Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts and Docent at the Aalto University School of Art, Design, and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. Minkkinen was born in Finland in 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1951.Exploring the relationship between the body and the environment, Minkkinen’s photographs inhabit a space between self-portraiture and landscape photography.

This creative photographer dexterously integrates his body into the natural landscape, creating visceral, poetic images that often appear to defy reality.He has an innate ability to frame a picture, to see and pursue a complex and pleasing composition.Minkkinnen has developed the ability to fold his body into the frame.The artist bends, stretches, hides, twists, and somehow manages to contort himself into just the right position at just the right moment to capture that certain magic he is known for.These images seamlessly blend self-portraiture and landscape in a reminder that humans are a part of the natural world, and that mind and body are crucially interconnected, as are humanity and nature.Despite ever-advancing possibilities for enhancement offered by technology, Minkkinen resolutely chooses not to use digital manipulation in his work, relying solely on the beauty of nature and his own physical endurance.Addressing the surreal and timeless quality of these images, Minkkinen has said, “there is no age to the picture when it is just the landscape and the body.”More of Rafael Minkkinen‘s amazing photography can be found at https://www.arnorafaelminkkinen.com.