Ida Taavitsainen: Within Four Walls

Each photograph is dated, and the artist has written diary entries alongside the images. Limitations create freedom, and Ida Taavitsainen decided to only photograph in the family’s home after her son’s birth. The work began out of a need to process what happened during the day and to depict the great love and joy of everyday life, as well as the feeling of confinement that a new phase in life can entail. The exhibition presents over a hundred images taken in recent years. Together, they create both a general story about parenthood and a personal depiction of a growing family in Helsinki.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Tempo Documentary Festival and has received support from the Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation.

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Interview with photographer Ida Taavitsainen and curator Kristyna Müller

KM: Could you start by telling us how the exhibition ‘Between Four Walls’ began?

IT: It wasn’t planned as a project from the outset. When the pandemic restrictions on Japan were finally eased, my husband travelled there with our daughter to visit his family and asked if I wanted anything from there. I didn’t want to go with them as I was pregnant and the journey there now takes about 14 hours. I replied that I would love an Instax camera, as I thought it would be a nice way to photograph my children.

The pictures stay on my phone if I take them with it, and if I take them on film, it takes a very long time before I have them physically. I needed to create pictures, but also to have them immediately in my hand and to be able to take them easily and spontaneously. I didn’t really have a plan or a system, but I soon realised that I had only been taking photos indoors, at home, and I continued with that. It was also a way of not putting too much pressure on myself.

At some point, I started writing a diary. I have always kept a diary, but over the last 15 years it has been more sporadic. I had things to process: COVID was coming to an end, my husband had a budding midlife crisis, the planet was being destroyed, the war in Ukraine was ongoing, and should I really bring another child into this world? There was a lot to process.

KM: In your case, it is the mother who is also a photographer and thus becomes relatively invisible in your pictures, and by extension in the story of the family. What do you think about that role?

IT: I think it’s a common problem for mothers. I work as a workshop leader at the Finnish Museum of Photography and hold workshops with parents and young children, mainly mothers. During the meetings, I offer to take a picture of them together, and often afterwards it comes up in conversation that as a mother you are quite invisible in pictures. In life, you are not so invisible; the children usually come to me if they want something. In the exhibition, there is a picture of me from the maternity ward and a few selfies, but it is easy to forget yourself.

KM: How does this series differ from how you usually work?

IT: Mostly in that it’s so spontaneous, everyday; it’s not like I take time out specifically to photograph this. Whenever we’re at home, I might feel like taking a picture; sometimes I take two pictures in one day, sometimes none in a month. I don’t edit these pictures; some pictures weren’t included because they ended up somewhere else, but otherwise all the pictures are included.

KM: Why did you choose this technique?

IT: It’s different being photographed like this than with a phone. I try to avoid having my phone around my children. I also want to have something that is my own tool that the children are not allowed to take. They probably want to take the Instax camera, but it’s mine. You look at a mobile phone picture in a different way; this picture appears, we wait with excitement to see what it will be, it’s a different process. I know myself and no other alternatives would become physical images at this stage of life.

KM: I see your project as part of a tradition where female artists create a framework for themselves to be able to continue working as life changes. Other examples could be handicrafts and smaller-format works when there is neither time nor space for other creative pursuits. How do you see it?

IT: That’s how I see it too, absolutely. I work with analogue photography, but one of several reasons why I didn’t want to do it on colour film is that when you work in a darkroom, you come into contact with chemicals, and I couldn’t be in a darkroom because of pregnancy and breastfeeding. If you want to keep working when you have a family, you almost have to turn the camera towards yourself. I’ve worked with this theme before, but then perhaps more with previous generations in my family. It would be nice to see artwork by new fathers too.

KM: How does it feel to be so personal in an exhibition?

IT: That remains to be seen. I didn’t create the works with the intention of exhibiting them. But since I’m an artist, the possibility has always been there. Of course, I’ve wondered whether I’m doing the right thing for my children. Am I doing the same as everyone else who posts pictures of their children online? I see it as somewhat different; I don’t document every step they take in order to post it on social media. My daughter is eager to be part of an exhibition, and I have asked her if it is okay, if there is anything she does not want to be included, and together we have removed one picture.

There are many beautiful works of art where artist parents have taken pictures of their families. When you read interviews with, for example, Sally Mann’s children as adults, they don’t seem to be too traumatised.

The texts accompanying the pictures are very personal, but nothing I share is a big secret, mostly universal feelings that anyone can have and many can relate to. I don’t mind showing it; I’d rather show a slightly more realistic picture than an Instagram childhood where everything is completely perfect.

KM: Thank you very much, Ida!