Anna Kortelainen found a familiar story on Finna
The Finna service is an invaluable source and treasure trove of knowledge for Anna Kortelainen, author and researcher.
The situation was absolutely baffling. Anna Kortelainen was on Finna looking at pictures of homes in Helsinki at the end of the 1960s. Among them was a series of photos documenting her childhood home on Museokatu.
“I was looking at a picture of the living room where I learned to walk. The last photo in the series was taken in my parents’ bedroom. I took a closer look at the baby sleeping in the crib and realised that it was me!”
“I was looking at a picture of the living room where I learned to walk. The last photo in the series was taken in my parents’ bedroom. I took a closer look at the baby sleeping in the crib and realised that it was me!”
The City of Helsinki had hired the young Kari Hakli to photograph both small working class homes and the more affluent apartments in Töölö. He had rung the doorbell of a doctor’s family and received permission to take photos in the apartment and at the father’s medical office.
Anna Kortelainen
Helsinki-based fiction and non-fiction author and doctor of philosophy.
Her latest work, Uusi Viipuri, tells the story of how President Kekkonen wanted to establish a new city of Vyborg in Ostrobothnia to replace the one lost to the Russians during World War II. Kortelainen has made discoveries on Finna and at the National Library of Finland for every stage of the work.
Finna is like a second home
The Finna service is invaluable for Anna Kortelainen, DPhil, in her work as an author, art historian and researcher.
While writing the biography of Sara Hildén, who was a collector and patron as well as a successful fashion entrepreneur, Kortelainen looked up photos of the places Hildén had lived in or visited. She went from a child from a modest family to an acclaimed fashion magnate, and ultimately the founder of the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere.
“I went from picture to picture on Finna, following the chronology of Sara’s life, and I could map, understand, illustrate and document her every move and step. The script was visual from the very beginning”, says Kortelainen.
“I went from picture to picture on Finna, following the chronology of Sara’s life, and I could map, understand, illustrate and document her every move and step. The script was visual from the very beginning.”
The photos show what life was like in Finland at different points in history, and how people dressed and decorated their homes. It is also a good place to find a tremendous amount of details for a book. Kortelainen browses photos on Finna almost every day.
“I quite seriously call Finna my second home”, she says.
Anna Kortelainen’s favourites on Finna:
The Finna Street service
“A travel companion in my phone which can show me what life was like on a particular street decades ago. It’s like a speech bubble from the past in the middle of our daily lives.”
The Juha Lankinen collection of the Lappeenranta museums
“A lively and touching collection of photographs. It includes photos taken both by the father, architect Jalmari Lankinen in Vyborg before the war, and by the son, Juha Lankinen, who photographed Vyborg after the war.”
Read more about the Juha Lankinen collection
Mauno Mannelin’s photos
“Mannelin photographed industrial installations and many different kinds of workplaces from the 1930s until the 1960s. The photos usually also feature workers, so Finnish daily life of the time is visualised through labour, work groups and jobs, not just empty spaces.”
The Finnish language text has been published in its entirety in the National Library’s annual publication 2019. Text: Marjo Tiirikka, photos Marko Oja.
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