Niina Vatanen is a multidisciplinary artist working with photographs, text, sound and found material. Starting with her own personal diaries to archival materials found in museums, Vatanen has repeatedly attempted to depict time and our perception of it as the core question in her work. Vatanen builds layers into her images through painting, cutting, bonding, staging and re-photographing. She also uses simple, playful interventions to point our gaze directly at the photographic surface, revealing the act of seeing as an inherent element of photography, and explores perception in the interaction between the visible and the not visible.

Vatanen graduated with a Master’s degree from the Department of Photography at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 2008. She has studied also at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and at the Art Department of Barcelona University in Spain. Her artworks have been on display in numerous galleries, museums and photo festivals in Finland and abroad, e.g. Germany, France, The Netherlands, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Greece, Russia and South Korea including The Danish National Museum of Photography, Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille, The Finnish Museum of Photography, C/O Berlin, Athens Photo Festival, Daegu Photo Biennale, and others.

Niina Vatanen has published three books with the German publishing house Kehrer Verlag: Time Atlas (2019), Archive Play (2014) and A Room’s Memory/Huoneen muisti (2013). Vatanen lives and works in Helsinki.