Automobiles and Helsinki - exhibition at the automobile and road museum MOBILIA in Kangasala, Finland
AHO & SOLDAN – Automobiles & Helsinki photography exhibition at the MOBILIA Museum in Kangasala, June 12 - October 31, 2015.
The National Museum held the exhibition “AHO & SOLDAN – Automobiles & Helsinki”, 2013 - 2014, which is based on car photographs taken by Heikki Aho and Björn Soldan in Helsinki from the 1920s to the 1950s. Approximately half of the exhibition is displayed at Mobilia.
Writer Juhani Aho’s sons Heikki Aho (1895–1961) and Björn Soldan (1902–1953) were two of the most important portrayers of the developing Finland in the 1920s–1950s. Helsinki and its street views and cars play a major role in the extensive photography and film production of AHO & SOLDAN, the photography and film company established by Heikki Aho and Björn Soldan in 1924.
Heikki and Björn grew up in the artistic Ahola family home in Tuusula and moved to Helsinki in 1911. The capital became an ideal environment and focus for the brothers’ camera art. They recorded Helsinki phenomena as an everyday history of the independent republic from its first decade to 1945.
The cameras of AHO & SOLDAN adored the street life of the motorised capital. The car and the view on the background were a grand composition often repeated by AHO & SOLDAN. The exhibition features photographs by AHO & SOLDAN and films in themed compilations. The exhibition will be complemented with various car-themed items, including a 1926 Ford Model T 4 Door from the automobile and road museum Mobilia. The historic car will be brought in through the National Museum’s main entrance on Monday 4 November.
Ford’s assembly line manufactured over 15 million Model T Fords between 1914 and 1927. Approximately 7,000 of them were brought to Finland, guaranteeing Ford a dominant market share of car trade in the 1920s.