Susanna Majuri: Love

"I always get attached to my newest work – I admire it, I love it, and I am extremely kind to it. But at some point this relationship ends, and I need a new image to create.”

-Susanna Majuri

The retrospective exhibition of the work of Susanna Majuri (1978–2020), titled Love, gathers together photographs from her entire career: her most well-known pieces are shown side by side with less common early works.

Majuri composed photographs through the things she admired and adored. In her work she created worlds with real substance and invited the viewer to imagine alternative realities; each of Majuri's photographs is like a passage from a fairytale, or a dream told out loud.

Central elements in Majuri's work include water, strong colors, Nordic nature, and human models who acted as character within the staged scenarios. Water was particularly dear to Majuri, and she became known for the fantastical works she created by submerging an enormous background fabric onto the bottom of a swimming pool. Water can drown us and strong currents may wash us away, but water can also uphold and carry us. Of all the elements in the world, it seems to most clearly express human feelings, memories, and the unconscious mind.

Susanna Majuri spoke to us through her fictional creations, and she also showed who she was as a person, what she had felt and experienced, what pain she had carried and what her loving gaze had seen. Storytelling was a form of escape for her, as well as a method for comprehension. The wordless world was given form in Majuri's photographs.

The exhibition is produced by the Finnish Museum of Photography and curated by Maria Faarinen and Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger.