The 'Loveliest Girl in the World' comes to the Finnish Embassy

"The Loveliest Girl in the World," says Miina Savolainen, the photographer, "is a story about becoming visible, about accepting oneself and seeing the good in situations, where the good is not easily seen.  This method of empowering photography has been used in Finland during the last decade in care and educational work."

 

The Finnish embassy and its first female U.S. ambassador, Mrs. Ritva Koukku-Ronde, host the exhibition to stress the importance of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.

 

According to the embassy's news release, Savolainen is a community-art photographer from Helsinki whose works deal with social engagement.  She previously examined fatherhood in its different forms and is working on a community art project involving inter-sexed and transgendered individuals.  She has educated more than 3,000 professionals in Finland to apply the method of empowering photography in social work, healthcare and education.

 

In her exhibition, Savolainen chronicled 10 girls as they matured in a home for children.  The overlooked and abused children were photographed on their own terms in order for the girls and those around them to appreciate their worth.  The idea for the project originated from Savolainen's understanding that verbal communication was not sufficient to heal children whose trust had been broken with words.

 

 

The exhibition, described in the embassy news release, is a touching coming-of-age story of marginalized children becoming visible and discovering their self-acceptance.  In the photos, she says the girls could see themselves as whole and valuable.  The mythical nature in the photos appears as the protector of wounded children.  The photos impart a simple yet powerful idea:  Everyone is entitled to feel precious and beloved.

 

Behind the more than 120 chromogenic color photographs developed personally by Savolainen are 70,000 photos, all shot on film, and more than 200,000 kilometers of travel to beautiful sites in Finland – snow-covered woods and fields, smoldering forest-fire landscapes, a still lake in a summer's night -- places to make one see the world around us differently.  Each girl has thousands of photographs of herself in which she can see her different sides, feelings and growth.

 

Empowering photography, says the embassy's news release, has been used in Finland in therapy, education and workplace development for more than 20 years.  This award-winning social innovation developed by Savolainen elevates the exchange of a gaze into a tool for dialogic interaction and workplace improvement.  The method reversed the balance of power between the photographer and the subject by creating a process of dialogue and transforming the photograph into an instrument of self-discovery.

 

"It is such a big thing to look at yourself deeply and true.  It might be that your whole way to see yourself has to change more gentle and merciful before you really can do so.  And we all need appreciative mirrors to do so," she adds.

 

"From the early childhood the world has appeared for these children as a chaotic place where bad things happen and where people do bad things to each other," Savolainen says.  In the photos Savolainen finds a deeper meaning for beauty:  "that we can see the world also as beautiful and comforting if we just want to see it that way."

 

"In the photo situation we focus on looking at each other.  And I realized that this [was] exactly what these children have been missing starting from the early parent-child interaction." Savolainen observed.

 

Savolainen says the young women decided which photos had the most meaning. "So this isn't photographer's art," she states. "The idea is that these young people have had the chance to become visible for themselves and for others in a way they have defined themselves."

 

"When I started working in the childcare as a young, enthusiastic social educator in the early 1990's, I thought it was the most important work you can ever do," Savolainen added.  "Remember to look at yourself and your meaningful ones with loving and gentle eyes."