Ida Taavitsainen Valuma I, 2025 Kromogeeninen värivedos 29,8 x 19,1 cm (kehyksineen)

“I have worked with analog photography and in darkrooms for over 20 years, and along the way more than a few mistakes, surprises, and failures have occurred. During shooting, when developing film, or when making prints in the darkroom, something can go wrong. The paper or film might be expired, the exposure might fail, the film might accidentally be double-exposed. At any stage of the process, from photographing to the final print, light can leak into the image; in the darkroom the filter or exposure time may be wrong, or the filters might be left turned off entirely. Paper can shift accidentally at a critical moment in the darkroom, get scratched, or get stuck in a machine just when all the settings have finally been adjusted correctly. The possibilities for failure are endless, but without mistakes, no innovations are born. According to the story, pseudo-solarisation, also known as the Sabatier effect, was discovered by accident when a mouse ran over photographer Lee Miller’s foot in the darkroom, causing Miller to switch on the light in the middle of developing a photograph by her lover, the artist Man Ray. The effect was known in the early days of photography, but had fallen into oblivion. 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—the future classic—but sometimes it can also bring something new or beautiful, something surprising, into the image. Over the years I have saved my best failures and blunders, the test prints with the wrong but beautiful tones, and the interesting light leaks. Some have lingered in my subconscious—the image did not turn out as expected, but became something else, something intriguing. Even if the photo is technically flawed, does that make it bad?

For this exhibition I have gathered my best failures and joyful surprises: botched exposures and light leaks, blurred papers, spoiled film, test strips that were too interesting to throw in the trash, empty frames showing chemical streaks, and a piece of sky that appeared on the edge of the paper from the neighbouring film frame while printing another image.”

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