Opened in the beginning of summer and will remain open until 6th September in Gallery x-ist, the ‘Collected North: Helsinki School of Photography’ exhibition is carrying a wind from Helsinki School to Istanbul with a selection from the works of Anni Leppälä, Joakim Eskildsen, Saana Wang, Sandra Kantanen and Pertti Kekarainen and curated by Timothy Persons, who is also the director of photography masters degree programme in University of Art and Design Helsinki. Writing on the exhibition does also seem like understanding this change in the North.

Whenever basic education is in discussion, one of the education models is the Finland model: it is an education system that most of the countries take as an example with its rather free students and a structure that the students are not put into a competition through exams. I don't know if Helsinki School is in an interaction with this education model rather than the fact that it is in Finland; yet when you analyse the characteristics, then you see that the students developing themselves in a free, but interactive way forms the basis of Helsinki School.  Timothy Persons, who is the architect of the change starting in the masters degree programme in Aalto University in the beginning of 90s and also the curator of this exhibition, describes this model in an introduction, which he wrote for another exhibition, as such: "This model provides a self-criticism and thus assess their own works for a selected masters degree students, besides their normal timetable.  The aim in the beginning was to provide these selected students in the class to form, edit, present, curate their works  in a professional level."

Valuing the students as if they are professionals and letting themselves free in the works they are going to produce in order to provide an environment, where they can develop themselves with critical point of view, lie behind the development of this ecole. Involvement of artists such as Pentti Sammallahti, who almost writes poetry with photography, in the education process gave the students an opportunity to get to know important inspiration sources closely. The university started supporting the students' solo exhibitions as an institution in various venues in the second half of 90s and this provided the students to be known in photography environments as well as being a big motivation. As a result, the university gradually became an attraction point for more talented students to choose Helsinki in order to have a photography education. The students has started to become a part of international photography environments in 2000s and TAIK, which is the abbreviation of university in Finnish, has turned into a brand.   While the determined management of Timothy Persons represent the ones, who are included in this group, in international expositions such as Paris Photo, Gallery Taik in Berlin majorly hosts the works of photographers involved in Helsinki School.  Besides, a series of books published in time also conduce towards forming a complete works of this graduate group educated in Aalto University.

The members of Helsinki School, who can be commemorated as a photography group producing works in various styles and subjects, are among the recognized photographers. The masters degree programme of the university has become the choice of, not only Finnish photographers, but talented youth from various parts of the world.

Attracting the attention for being the first exhibition of x-ist, which is formed of only international photographers, 'Collected North' gathers photographers from different genres and periods in accordance with Helsinki School's tradition. The exhibition opens with the photography of Anni Leppälä, who is the youngest of all the artists in the exhibition. The photographs of Leppälä makes us feel the effort of an artist, who is going after the traces we left in time. These are the photographs, which do not have human beings or the human beings themselves, but the traces. Photographs are full of details that you can look at for a long time and some of them need effort to find the keystone in the puzzle.  A vague eerie feeling that is caused by this, makes your effort to understand increase in a way.

One of the last graduate of university Saana Wang, has photographed the buildings, which will be demolished due to urban transformation in Hujilaous district located in Beijing the capital of Republic of China, and the people living in those buildings in her series called 'Hujilaou'. Feeling of life experience in those buildings constructed during communist period were given through the pictures on the walls, photographs, calenders and sometimes the traces of a poster that was once on the wall. It resembles a documentary work in this as it is; yet the residents of those flats -mostly the ones on the forefront- were put on a makes up like in traditional Chinese opera and this makes a contrast with the documentary character of the work. People refer to past since they remind traditional Opera as well as presenting their dreams on their new life by causing those flats, which will be transformed, used as a setting.

One of the most recognized name of selection is Joakim Eskildsen takes his place in the exhibition with his series called 'American Realities', which he has realized for Time magazine in 2011. Aiming to reflect an impression on the way people live in the places of the U.S.A., where the poverty rate is high, Eskildsen presents once again that the 'American Dream' is not real. He draws attention to how the problems of poverty wrap people up and how the new generation is struggling with growing up in high crime rate districts and health problems due to the lack of social security.

Being the oldest graduate in the exhibition, Pertti Kekarainen, who was born in 1965, has the most eccentric works. Having nine different meanings in Finnish, her work 'TILA' is giving the examples of how photography can be used conceptually while focusing on how the human perception work and the breakages that might be created in this perception. This work setting off from the word 'TILA', which has nine different meanings such as inner space, distance in between objects, space, can be evaluated as a photographic essay or a research that is like the variations in music.

​The last artist in the exhibition Sandra Kantanen attracts attention with her photographs, which she has started while she was working on Chinese landscape paintings in China, where she went as an exchange student during her masters degree,  and has produced based on traditional Far East nature paintings.  Landscape is a kind that is connecting painting and photography due to 'Camera obscura'. While the photographs of Kantenen evokes painting with their minimalist approach and colour gradients, the movement they have makes them to have a different dimension and as this feature carries them to a further level than being only a landscape photography, it is also taking Kantenen to the verge of experimental photography. 

Being an exhibition containing different examples of Helsinki School, 'Collected North' encourages us to analyse this graduate group. The exhibition reflects the difficulty of representing a big group that these kind of selections usually face with. One of the most important reasons for this is that it wasn't a big exhibition as in scale and trying to represent a big ecole.  North Europe is an area that we are familiar with from photography perspective due to Swedish photography, which the photography spectators in our country are relatively acquainted with and has an influence on young generation producing currently in Turkey; but TAIK represents rather a new group especially with the ecole it created and thus 'Collected North' provides a very good opportunity to turn the axis towards Finland.