ABSTRACT
We can never understand a picture unless we grasp the ways in which it shows what cannot be seen.2
Imagining the Arctic: The Native Photograph in Alaska, Canada and Greenland at the British Museum and Strangers in the Arctic - ‘ Ultima Thule ’ and Modernity at Pori Art Museum in 1996; The Waste Land: Desert and Ice. Barren Landscapes in Photography at Vienna’s Atelier Augarten, Centre for Contemporary Art in winter 2001/2002; Ultima Thule and The Frozen Frontier at Helsinki Museum of Cultures in winter 2001; Arctic Inua - Arktisen henki and Pohjoinen hehku at Tampere’s Vapriikki Museum Centre in winter 2001 and spring 2002: recent conferences on and popular exhibitions depicting Arctic and Northern landscapes, places and peoples bear witness to a rediscovery of the North among museum curators and the general public. Images and pictorial representations of the North, including photographs, play a major role in most of these exhibitions. Ari Aukusti Lehtinen shows in his chapter in the present volume that photography is also a key element of approaching the North in print media. In particular in N66/Culture in the Barents Region photography provides a “common language” for peoples speaking different languages. In the photographs, Lehtinen argues, “the Northern
1 The illustrations in this chapter were placed at my disposal by Muguette Dumont (Phototheque, Musee de l’Homme, Paris), Tanja Lintunen (University of Tampere, Department of Music Anthropology), Hannu Sinisalo (Tampere) and Jorma Puranen (Helsinki). Eija Kukkurainen (University of Tampere, Department of Music An thropology) provided background information on Professor Erkki Ala-Konni. I greatly appreciate their interest in, and support of, the chapter.
