Last update: October 20, 2025.
Finnish church architecture inside out
I have photographed all the Finnish churches inside and outside mainly during 2015–2017. Every church has been photographed both in broad overviews and details, based on the knowledge of each churches’ role in the history of Finnish church architecture.
My collection consists on average of 40–60 interior and exterior images of each Finnish church, raising a total of around 40 thousand images. All the images have been taken in raw format.
Professionally taken exterior and interior photos of churches provide ample opportunities for interesting analysis of both interior and exterior features. Comparisons between different churches can be made in many ways: all the churches in the same area, all the works of art by the same artist, or, for example, all the buildings from the same period. This might be of interest to local schools, active parish groups, anyone interested in local history, and, of course, researchers in relevant fields.
The photographical trips in Finland demanded a lot of previous planning. Arranging access to the insides of the churches usually took as much time as conducting a single church tour. For example, the first indoor shoot planned for the day might need to be canceled because the sexton happened to be 70 kilometers away at the same time. Or there might be one or two church services going on at the church.
Rain is sometimes beneficial for indoor photography, but outdoor photography is practically difficult in the rain. The subject doesn’t often look much better than a wet cat – good exceptions exist, however.
Due to problems like this, a lot of driving back and forth was necessary.
So, I can only thank most kindly you all – the really numerous and helpful people in all the parishes and especially Director Pekka Rehumäki in the Church Council of Finland – who helped me to visit and photograph all of these Finnish churches.
Gears
Good gears have been used. My favourite Canon L-series objects has been Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L II, since it provides crisp sharp overviews, and, most importantly, standard architectural photography without converging vertical lines. Other Canon L-lenses have been used for several specific uses, such as Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM and Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM. One interesting small item in my camera bag is the Canon Angle Finder C, which has been astonishingly helpful when shooting upwards (like paintings on the arches of medieval churches).
Due to the long exposure times required almost always for the indoor photos, and actually often for outdoors also, I have used Manfrotto #055 tripod with Manfrotto 029 as a head. Many of the photos gained would not have been possible without this combination.
Important contributions to the subject
Many others have also photographed Finnish churches. In Heikki Klemetti’s two-volume series “Suomalaisia kirkonrakentajia” [Finnish church builders] (1927 and 1936), the names of photographers are rarely mentioned. There are certain historical reasons for this, which also applies to Carolus Lindberg’s work “Suomen kirkot” [Finnish churches] (1934). The latter book approached Finnish church architecture from a different perpective than Klemetti did. However, even if there are differencies in the approach, the role of the photographers remained the same. There is a long list called “Kuvien luettelo” [List of pictures] but it only links the names of the churches with images of them. The photographers are not mentioned in the short three-line introduction; only the main archives and a few parish archives are mentioned as examples where the images came from.
In the later “Suomen kirkot ja kirkkotaide 2” [Finnish church architecture and church art] (1980), the numerous photographers or archives have been, unlike before, clearly mentioned. There is one black-and-white photo each church, mainly of the exterior of the church. Esa Santakari is clearly the most important single photographer. He was a member of the book’s editorial board, vicar and a very talented and enthusiastic amateur photographer.
Recently, Petteri Järvinen has photographed every Finnish church from a totally new perspective through his meticulous aerial photography. Järvinen’s photos capture uniquely, for example, the historical significance between churches and waterways.
Some considerations for further development
Due to the very large number of images, it doesn’t seem realistic to try and develop all these images online anytime soon with current resources.
A smaller set of some of the most interesting images of each church might be feasible, especially if the images wouldn’t need too much adjustments. Photographing with Canon TS-E 24mm has reduced a lot of unnecessary work with unintended converging lines. Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II has been more than helpful in very tight architectural conditions, but there is sometimes a lot work to make these images to look like “natural”. I consider these images as a somewhat unrealistic stock of images, but anyway a good way to record how, for example, something large with limited amount of distance looked like.
Rantsila church – tests and considerations
The Rantsila church is a random church in a test phase – testing only 9 images. Images 5 and 6 don’t quite match and the 1st and the 7th image are a bit underexposed as developed (as of September, 17). These kind of changes are fairly easy to make, especially if the Photoshop stage of the workflow mainly involves automation (actions) and manual adjustments are rarely used. I use an Adobe Brigde–Camera Raw–Photoshop workflow.
Another way would be to develop and show at least one interior and one exterior images in a page. This has already been done with the images from my visit to the Norwegian stave churches (2025, see menu).
Both of these approachments work well for a suitably small number of churches, but prevents one from taking a local church as a starting point and comparing it to others in the manner described above. Like, for example, has the painter in the Rantsila church (above) made paintings in other churches in Finland, also?
If so, a relational database behind the scenes would easily answer this question. This is how I actually work locally, with a Filemaker relational database.
Now, a cloud-based hosting of a Filemaker database would be an obvious choice. Filemaker Server was also the way how the earlier mentioned Kuvio was maintained at the University of Helsinki for 20 years. Today, this raises, however, a number of questions, both financial and technical, but none that couldn’t be overcome.
Feedback
I will gladly take into account any comments on this topic.
Arto Kuorikoski
ThD, post-doc Researcher
arto.kuorikoski@gmail.com
Below is my recent publication “Puukirkkojen Suomi” [Wooden Churches in Finland], written by me and containing over 200 large-size images from my photo collection. See Amanita for more.
