BIO
Harri Pälviranta is an artist and academic who explores the relationships between images and violence. Often socially performed, sometimes a natural phenomenon, violence always has social and societal qualities and consequences, and whether violence is systemic, structural, direct, or symbolic, it always surfaces to varying degrees visually or can be touched and studied with visual means. Rather than aiming for clear answers, Pälviranta’s work is burdened with questions, and although his practice is based on documentary strategies, he advocates for a more anti-essentialist and subjective approach to photography, defining his point of view as post-documentary.
Originally from Tampere Finland, his background is in political science (University of Tampere) before studying his BA in photography at the Turku Arts Academy (2000). While pursuing his career as a documentary photographer and artist, he returned to academia and studied MA in Media Studies at the University of Turku Finland (2005). This led him to delve even further into the theories of photography, and he completed his doctorate in photography at the Aalto University in Helsinki Finland in 2012.
His work has recently been included in group exhibitions at Hämeenlinna Art Museum (Finland), The Reference in Seoul (South Korea), Kana Kawanishi Gallery in Tokyo (Japan), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), Benaki Museum in Athens (Greece), Kunst Haus Wien (Austria), Helsinki City Museum (Finland) and Deictorhallen, Haus der Photographie (Hamburg, Germany). Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Lappeenranta Art Museum (Finland), the National Museum of Contemporary Art Chiado in Lisbon (Portugal), the H2O Gallery in Barcelona (Spain) and the Latvian Museum of Photography in Riga (Latvia). Among his previous achievements, he won the PhotoEspana Descubrimientos price in 2007 and in 2010 LeadAwards price in Hamburg in 2010. In 2024 he received a five-year full working grant from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (2025-2029).
In addition to his artistic work, he has curated exhibitions for galleries, museums and festivals in Finland, Spain, South Korea, Italy, Japan, Denmark and Albania. He has held residencies in Albania, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden and the USA. He frequently lectures and teaches at Finnish universities and conducts workshops internationally.