24.10. – 20.12.2025, Hippolyte Korjaamo

Ida Taavitsainen has worked with analogue photography for over 20 years. During shooting, film developing, or darkroom printing, something can always go wrong. The paper or film may be expired, the exposure may fail, or the film may accidentally be double-exposed. Throughout the entire process — from taking the photograph to producing the final print — light can leak into the image. In the darkroom, a filter or exposure time may be incorrect, filters might be left off altogether, or the paper may shift at a critical moment, get scratched, or jam in the machine just when all the settings are finally right. For this exhibition, Taavitsainen has gathered her finest failures and joyful surprises.

The possibilities for failure are endless, but without mistakes there are no innovations. It is believed that pseudo-solarisation, also known as the Sabatier effect, was discovered by chance when a mouse ran across photographer Lee Miller’s foot in the darkroom, and she briefly turned on the light while her lover, Man Ray, was developing a photograph. The effect was already known in the early days of photography, but it had been forgotten over time. Man Ray refined the technique, made it famous, and took the credit for it.

Sometimes a human or technical error can “ruin” the best photograph, a future classic. At other times, it can bring something new, beautiful, or surprising to the image. Over the years, Taavitsainen has kept her finest mistakes and blunders: test prints with the wrong but beautiful tones, intriguing light leaks, and accidentally created multiple exposures. Some of these have lingered in her subconscious — the photograph did not turn out as expected, but became something else, something interesting. And even if a photograph is technically flawed, does that make it a bad one?

When you master a technique, you can also misuse it to create effects — for example through double exposure, scratching, cross-processing, or pushing the film. However, this exhibition was not born from controlled or intentional mistakes; rather, the errors have appeared to the artist more as a result of technical faults, chance, or simply her own carelessness. In a world striving for perfection, where beauty is largely defined by algorithms and corporations, it can be refreshing to let go of control and recognise the beauty of failure and chance.

Ida Taavitsainen (b. 1987) is a photographer from Helsinki working with analogue photography. In her practice, she explores memories, family ties, presence and absence, and people’s emotional attachment to places and objects. Taavitsainen studied in England, earning a master’s degree in Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2014, and a bachelor’s degree from the University for the Creative Arts in 2011. She also studied analogue photography at Västra Nylands Folkhögskolan in 2007–2008, and has worked in the darkroom since her teenage years.

Taavitsainen’s works have been shown in group exhibitions and festivals across Europe and Asia, including the Finnish Museum of Photography, Loviisa City Museum, and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (KMOPA) in Japan. Her works are held in the collections of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and KMOPA. The London based publisher Booth-Clibborn Editions released her photobook The Memory of My Wardrobe in 2014. (Mis)happenings is Taavitsainen’s first solo exhibition in Finland, and it was presented in a smaller format in September 2025 at Galleria Uusi Kipinä in Lahti.

The artist’s work has been supported by Konstsamfundet.