browseHonnos My Fiddler
Pentti Sammallahti (Photographer)
Text drawn from Side Gallery archive sources:
Honnos My Fiddler (1982) is an example of a mechanically printed portfolio made by Sammallathi from his photographic project on the gypsies in Hungarian Transylvania. The portfolio includes accompanying poems in English, Finnish and Romany by his brother, Pekka Sammallahti).
Pentti Sammallahti is a benchmark figure in contemporary Finnish photography. His work has been exhibited widely both in Finland and abroad and is represented in numerous collections throughout the world. As a teacher he has had an enormous influence on a whole generation of documentary photographers in Finland. He has travelled widely as a photographer, producing other major bodies of work from Russia, Turkey, Nepal, Japan, Ireland and the UK as well as from his home country.
He is also known as a passionate seeker of the perfect (mechanical) printing method. His own innovative printing techniques and the reintroduction of the portfolio form have re-awakened broader interest in published photographic art in Finland. Influenced by the idea of 'artist books' - individual works in which the artist is responsible for the whole: photography, the making of prints, layout, design and typography, reproduction and often the actual printing process either with the offset or the gravure method, Sammallahti launched the Opus Series, which is now an integral feature of Finnish book art, consisting of some thirty publications by ten or so photographers.