Seppo Verho

I am Seppo Verho, a 75−year−old former journalist and current photographer. I have three daughters and one grandchild.

I started photographing when I was 12. I used my pocket money to buy an affordable camera. I photographed seriously, practiced a lot of things with the help of guides. Then, during the so called “traffic jam” years, I did not have time to photograph much else than birthdays and holidays.

Now, in retirement, I have been trying to find a photographic artist in myself. At first, my photographing was of documentary type, later it has more and more included the doer. The last pictures have been entirely abstract images. All the distractive factors, like an object or a model, have disappeared.

In my latest exhibition, the subject was experiencing old age. I have all the time been getting closer to myself in photographing. The exhibition tells about how I have experienced ageing. After all, death is a part of old age, and it is also in the pictures.

An elderly person may have challenges in exhibitions. Not long ago we had an exhibition which was on the second floor and a narrow wooden staircase led there. Of course, that is not ideal for the elderly persons.

Another exhibition was in a large shopping centre and is was a challenge for the visitors to find it in the first place.

At the latest show, I tried to fit a list of pictures on one page. It did fit on it, but the font was really small. Afterwards, I thought that it could have been made double−sided, then you would have seen the text better.

There were no chairs in one exhibition hall. Especially if there are several exhibitions at the same place, it would be good to be able to sit down sometime during the visit.

Otherwise, old and young people experience art in their own personal way and it does not depend on age.

Kuva Seppo Verho

When planning an exhibition, you have to take a lot of things into account. First there is the actual steak, i.e. where to find the subject and how to create an artistic whole out of it. It is not enough to select the best images on the subject, but they must form a series. There must be sufficient coherence between the images and also sufficient variation to ensure that the whole does not become boring.

After that, a pretty big job is to think about which pictures fit side by side, what their order should be and how to hang them. You can always hang everything traditionally in a row at the height of the eye, but there are many other possibilities. The way of hanging must fit the subject and images of the exhibition.

You have to find a venue for the exhibition, and they are expensive. It also costs money to make, prepare and hang pictures, so you have to ask money somewhere.

Diversity can be implemented in many ways in an exhibition. There are plenty of ways to help the dim−sighted and the blind, but they cost quite a lot of money.

For example, describing images on tape is a job done by professionals with certain rules and standards. You can make touchable reliefs of photos, for example on “foam paper”. That does not happen automatically either, you need a human being for that, too.

Perhaps the easiest way to help is that the photographer her−/himself tells about each image on the tape and there is a QR code next to the image that allows you to listen to it. If you put the author's description on a plaque or on a list of works, the information will be received in the wrong place. I think it is better for the viewer to see the picture first, form their own view, and only then hear the photographer's thoughts.

The image analysis is diverse. In the traditional sense, it often means that the picture is analyzed by writing or telling, for example, in a teaching situation. It demands quite a lot, you have to have talent and knowledge like critics. You have to know the genres and history of photography, perhaps even the photographer's previous work and his history as a photographer. Of course, you must also understand the picture; what factors in this particular image give a certain impression: for example, colours, composition, or lines.

Then, of course, there is the analysis and interpretation which happens naturally whenever you see a picture. You stop in front of the picture and just let the analysis about what the picture says, flow freely. Mental imagery is created by it. In that case the analysis happens on a personal level and in that moment, in front of that picture. You do not have to rehearse it much, it comes naturally.

I was involved in interviewing accessibility experts. It surprised me how many different assistive devices there are, for example for the visually impaired. For example, that there are moving instructions for public places that can be downloaded to a phone. Or that three−dimensional scale models of works of art are made. But that is pretty expensive and rare.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was what kind of a rigmarole you have to go through if you become blind as an adult. You have to learn how to write and how to walk with a stick and maybe with a dog. It amazed me how far you can go. For example, we met a blind man who does competitive sailing. If my eyes were blindfolded and I were put on a boat, it would not work.

When a person goes blind, he/she has to go through such a process that even jumping onto a sailboat is no longer a big deal.