Focus on Form – Design photography by Matti and Otso Pietinen

Otso and Matti Pietinen worked in cooperation with designers, using the means of photography to translate the designs into powerful, simplified forms or surreal poems. The photographs were used in advertising and design exhibitions, and they spread around the world through the international press.

The images were part of a national project and were used to create an image of the superiority of Finnish design. In the photographs by the Pietinens, the objects detach themselves from the physical world, and its laws and constraints, and are transported into their own reality. Material and use give way to iconic forms.

The works on display are the original exhibition prints. The photographs were exhibited in Reykjavik, Iceland, in March 1955, and were donated to the Finnish Museum of Photography in the spring of 2016. The exhibition celebrates the centenary of the birth of Otso Pietinen.