Exhibition opening on Tuesday Feb 18th from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Warm welcome!

Photographic artist and researcher Leena Saraste (b.1942) has photographed in various parts of the world during her long career. In the early 1980s, Saraste was one of the first female photographers in the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon, among other places. In 1983, Saraste compiled her photographs into a journalistic photo book, Rakkaani, Palestiina (Tutkijaliitto, 1983).

The small-scale exhibition, which will be held in the Book Gallery space of Laterna Magica, will revisit the everyday life of Palestinians in the 1980s, which was overshadowed by uncertainty and violence. However, the images also reflect hope and warmth.

Leena Saraste reflects on the images 40 years on: "The media is full of images of crises and refugees, of anonymous victims. They become news because of their accidents or threatening actions. A person without a passport is not a person at all.

Before my first journey to Beirut in 1980 I had been analysing the press coverage of the Middle East for years, but it did not prepare me for anything I met there. How could it? Journalists stay a week or two and carry on to another crisis area. Newspapers publish just one picture a day delivered by photo agencies: a big media event or suffering faces.

The image of Palestinians for me/us was Arafat and his fedayyeen, with kuffiyehs and kalashnikovs.  I tried to understand how continuous political crisis and conflict affect people. But where to publish photos of the effects of war instead of actions only?

In the 1980´s everybody in the camps wanted to be photographed, preferably showing the V-sign and a gun. The departure of the Palestinian fighters from Beirut in 1982 felt almost like a victory. We were told they had not been defeated, and there was hope of returning to their home country. Today the majority of the refugees are still in the camps, forgotten, and not willing to be photographed in their misery.

Travelling back in the early 2000's after 20 years of absence everything looked different. Beside misery I saw stunning wall paintings, artistic, political graffiti. And I found some people whom I had photographed in 1982. I also found people whose photos I had previously had published in newspapers in Finland, and the published photos were of great importance, a proof of life.