Nina Korhonen: Happy/Brooklyn 1988-93 [signed]

Nina Korhonen's first photographic series – a loving portrait of Brooklyn's Finntown at a time when a photographer could walk around with a camera and seemlessly interact with people and places.

New York has two Finntowns. One in Harlem and a bigger one in Brooklyn. And perhaps not so well know is the Finns founded New Yorks’s oldest residential co-op buildings. This series is about Finntown in Sunset Park – an area of Brooklyn where Finnish immigrants settled in the early 20th century. Nina Korhonen's grandmother Anna (the subject in Korhonen's award-wining book ”ANNA Amerikan mummu”, Journal, 2004) lived in Finntown. During 1988-93 Korhonen documented a seemingly buzzing life in Finntown as a part of a project on Nordic immigrants in New York. It had its community center Imatra which was filled to the rim ever Wednesday night. But there was also weekend trips with Anna to an enchanting Coney Island to eat knishes,take a stroll on the boardwalk or snap pictures of the Polar Bear Club bathers at Brighton Beach on a chilly winter day. Nina Korhonen's photographs are filled with wonder and loving observations.