KOSTI S. RUOHOMAA – Photographer as Poet: Images from 1939-1961

Invitation to Press Event

KOSTI S. RUOHOMAA
Photographer as Poet: Images from 1939-1961
Exhibition at the Pori Art Museum
21st April – 30th May 1998

Kosti Ruohomaa (1913-1961) was one of the reformers of American photojournalism in the 1940s and 1950s. His main body of work was created as a regular photographer for the legendary Black Star Agency and Publishing Company, which facilitated the widespread dissemination of his images. For example, Ruohomaa’s photo essays and cover images for Life and Time magazines are considered landmark works in the history of photojournalism. He also photographed for National Geographic, Look, and Saturday Evening Post.

In the early stages of Ruohomaa’s career (1938-1943), he worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles. During this time, he captured unique photographs of Disney employees’ working conditions and the strike. Ruohomaa’s first photographs were published shortly after his arrival in California, in 1940 by the Los Angeles Times. His breakthrough came with his 1941 photo series on Native Americans.

Kosti Ruohomaa’s roots are in Satakunta. His parents had emigrated to the United States in the 1910s: his father Selim from Panelia in Kiukainen and his mother Sofia from Lappi in the Turku region. Kosti Ruohomaa was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and the family moved to Rockland, a Finnish-American community in Maine, in 1923. The family’s small farm served as an important base for Kosti Ruohomaa’s international career, and it also housed his studio. Ruohomaa is best known for his dramatic and delicate black-and-white photographs. He experimented with color film, including on a long trip through Europe and North Africa in 1948. During this time, he spent several weeks in Finland, reporting for Life magazine on the Finnish parliamentary elections. Ruohomaa also visited his parents’ hometowns in Satakunta and photographed relatives in Panelia and Lappi.

Kosti Ruohomaa’s body of work plays a significant role in the history of photography. Two books of his work have been published in the United States: Maine Coastal Portrait (1959) and Night Train in Wiscasset, which was posthumously published by Black Star in 1977 as a tribute to Ruohomaa. His images are held in several important photography collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institution. Ruohomaa’s photographs have been exhibited in numerous solo and thematic exhibitions in the United States since the 1950s.

The selection of Ruohomaa’s photographs from 1939 to 1961, shown at the Pori Art Museum, is the first comprehensive exhibition of his work in Finland. The exhibition’s American curator, Deanna Bonner-Ganter, has studied Kosti Ruohomaa’s photographs for over ten years. In connection with the exhibition, Deanna Bonner-Ganter will speak about Kosti Ruohomaa’s life and photography at the Pori Art Museum on Wednesday, 22nd April 1998, at 18:00.

Press Event at the Pori Art Museum
Tuesday, 21st April 1998, at 12:00

Inquiries: Tel. +358 (02) 621 1081 or 621 1083
Fax: +358 (02) 621 1091
Email: jari.vanhala@pori.fi

Translated with ChatGPT