Photographer Matti A. Asikainen

Matti A. Asikainen was born in Oulu on June 16, 1920. He was only three months old when his family left for Ovamboland, the most northerly part of South West Africa, on assignment for The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission. The family returned to Finland in 1929. His parents had met A.A. Laitinen and Eino Laitinen in a Christian Institute, who persuaded them to come live in their native Utajärvi. The Asikainen family moved to Koivula, a house situated in Murronkylä in Utajärvi.

During wartime, Matti A. Asikainen served in the Finnish Army's radio espionage unit, where his main task was listening to coded Soviet radio traffic and decoding the messages. He acted as a radio amateur for decades after the war and built most of his equipment himself.

He took the photographs on display here while working as a caretaker for the Utajärvi school and while attending to his various other technical activities in 1950-1954. The pictures he took tell about the life of the people of Utajärvi and give an even more far-reaching depiction of the life along the River Oulujoki at the beginning of the 1950's.

He recorded people's festivities and everyday events, but also the radically changing River Oulujoki landscape. He took a lot of portraits and recorded many happy family events, but also common events such as hunting and fishing. His photographs are vibrant with wealth, industriousness and harmony, a time of happiness. He gently takes his audience back to the time of his youth, which he observed with the eyes of an outsider, of a man who came to Utajärvi from Ovamboland as a child.

Matti A. Asikainen was present at his first exhibition at Utajärvi, but died while it was showing, on July 9, 2003 at his home in Rovaniemi, aged 83.

Text: Erkki Asikainen, son of the photographer

Translator: Mikko Asikainen, grandson of the photographer