On today’s episode of the FRAMES Photography Podcast W. Scott Olsen is talking to Finnish designer and photographer, Tua Rahikainen.
You can listen to this interview using our podcast player below, but we strongly encourage you to subscribe to the podcast in your podcast app, so that you don’t miss any future episodes of the show.
Tua Rahikainen was born in Helsinki, Finland. She graduated from college in 1963 and studied fashion design in the University of Applied Arts 1965-1969.
She took part in fur fashion shows representing the family fur company RAHIKAINEN already as a design student. New ideas from fabric fashion were introduced. Tight mini coats made of furs from Asia and Africa not used before, leftover fur pieces were sewn into hippie coats. Tua was in charge of the production, marketing, the sales in her own shop, and the export of her Design Furs.
She attended the photo sessions from the beginning of her career as a fur designer. Photos were important for marketing. Her new design seen in excellent photos were published in high quality magazines in Finland, Sweden, France, Germany and Italy.
In 1986 she attended a workshop to learn about analog black and white photography and darkroom development. The new b&w skills could at once be used during a trip to Nepal and Tibet thanks to a state design award the same year for a Postmodern fur collection.
Tua’s first photo exhibition was in the RAHIKAINEN shop with photos from the exotic trip.
Tua is on international photographers’ mailing lists and learnt from them about digital photography after getting her first digital camera 2005. Her own photo club arranges regular education for the newest development in digital photographing and printing. Famous teachers have been invited, some from abroad.
On Tua’s CV there is a long list of exhibitions. 22 are her first exhibition called a Designers View of Helsinki when Helsinki had been chosen to be The World Design Capital 2012. It also became a photo book.
10 years later, in 2022 she held a second Helsinki exhibition shown on two pop up walls in a gallery for modern art and design.
TUA RAHIKAINEN
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