My Weather Diary

Month of Photography 2006

The story of the Helsinki School is one of the latest chapters in the History of Photography and currently one of the most successful items of cultural export in Europe. It represents a new method devised by the University of Art and Design (TAIK University, Helsinki) in which the students combine techniques of photojournalism, social documentary and concept art.

The consistent work of Jari Silomäki represents the very essence of the Helsinki School.

In My Weather Diary - an ongoing series since 2001- the artist creates an archive of images by taking a picture of a landscape every day. The images are accompanied by a short hand-written text, reflecting on a private or a public event that occurred on that particular day. With this systematic approach Silomäki is turning public events into part of the personal narrative; meanwhile parallel to this his private encounters and emotions are gaining global significance.
Silomäki took a picture of a public building in Helsinki on the day when the Twin Towers collapsed, and recorded an image of a London underground entrance on the day when Arthur Miller died. His images cause distant corners of the world to become compressed into a small dot under the force of global events and distant events resonate in other parts of the world illustrating the claustrophobic climate of the so called "global village".

His diaristic approach and the sensitive texts place this work in a twilight zone somewhere between photography and literature.

Private view: Tuesday 7 November 2006, 6 pm
Opening speech: Gergely Nagy, writer
Open: from Monday to Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm

Exhibition website: www.silomaki-budapest.com

The exhibition and the connected website have been realized with the kind support of the FRAME, Finish Fund for Art Exchange, the Finish Embassy Budapest, the Municipal Government of Budapest, Cultural Committee, the Mackensen Kft., the Art Today magazine and the Notebookzone.