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Life as a Street Urchin

Iris, Fritz Englund, 1910’s, carbon print. Donated as part of a larger collection of prints in 1990.

There were other kinds of men in the world than her father, a well-to-do bourgeois head of the family. She had seen them loitering on the streets, smoking cigarettes and hollering at women passing by. “What would life as a mischievous street urchin be like?” Striking a pose with her hands in the pockets of her boyish seaman’s outfit and a makeshift “cigarette” between her teeth, the thought may have crossed Iris Englund’s mind, as her father Fritz Englund (1870–1950) took her picture. An active, experimental amateur photographer, Englund printed the picture in soft, hazy tones. This made the photograph more like a painting or graphic print, accentuating the artistic effect.

 

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More on the subject

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May Day Masquerade

Collection pick
Carnivals are rare in Finland, but on May Day people go out into the streets and squares in droves. Dressing up and wearing masks is all part of the fun, as this Merja Salo's photograph proves.

The Last Resort You Would Visit

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Martin Parr's photos in The Last Resort series were taken in England’s traditional New Brighton beach resort.

The Museum's collections

Collections
The collections of the Finnish Museum of Photography include more than two million photographs. The collections focus on 20th-century Finnish photography, and are made up of both selected works by photographers and images from extensive photographic archives. The museum's collection of objects includes thousands of photography-related artefacts. The museum also has a paper archive and a photographic library.