My Story – Faces of Kuopio Through Time

VB Photography Centre’s autumn exhibition My Story – Faces of Kuopio Through Time brings Kuopio’s history to life in color and places today’s faces alongside them, captured with a 19th-century photographic technique. Past and present meet tangibly in this exhibition, created to honor Kuopio’s 250th anniversary, and it reveals the city’s story in a way never seen before.

The starting point is a selection of portraits from the collections of the Kuopio Cultural History Museum, originally from Victor Barsokevitsch’s era. These portraits have been digitally colorized by Julius Backman-Jääskeläinen, working from Visby. His skillful use of color restores vitality and authenticity to the lives and details of past Kuopio residents.

The stories behind the photographs have been written by author Sirpa Kähkönen, known especially for her novel series set in Kuopio. Kähkönen weaves together historical sources, newspaper archives, and gives words to the people in the images—words they themselves never had the chance to leave behind. Her texts create narratives where layers of history, memories, and the present moment intertwine.

Contemporary Kuopio residents, in turn, have been photographed using the wet plate collodion method, invented in 1851. In this process, images are crafted by hand on-site directly onto aluminum or glass plates, just as they were in Barsokevitsch’s studio more than a century ago. The portraits were created by Aliisa and Tuomas Sinkkonen of Studio 1851 based in Pori, a photographic studio specializing in historical methods. The contemporary stories have been written by journalist and non-fiction author Jussi Tuovinen, based on interviews. The models were chosen through an open call, which received over 300 suggestions.

The exhibition is produced by the VB Photography Centre, with production support from the City of Kuopio’s anniversary program, and is part of the Kuopio 250 celebrations.