Tuomo Manninen
Tuomo Manninen, Discount Tombstones (Meadowlands Zone 5, Soweto), Photograph, 2011. Courtesy: The Artist
Tuomo Manninen is a Helsinki-based photographer who has been photographing self-identified “groups” of people around the world since 1995.
His photographs are a cross between documentary photography and dramatisation, and the expressions of his subjects convey pride, motivation, responsibility and determination in relation to their particular focuses and specialisms.
Tuomo will spend time in Coventry over the summer of 2025, getting to know and photographing local “groups”, these photographs will be presented across multiple Coventry Biennial venues as a part of the Obsessions, Possessions programme before becoming a part of Tuomo’s larger collection of “groups”.
Since starting this collection, collectively known as “Me/We” in Kathmandu in 1995, Tuomo has photographed “groups” in over 20 cities around the world and these artworks have been shown in over 100 solo and group exhibitions, significantly these exhibitions include the 49th Biennale di Venezia and Rencontres d’Arles Photo Festival.
More recent exhibitions have taken place at galleries and museums including the Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki, Finland), Centro de Arte Alcobendas (Madrid, Spain) and Coppel Digital Campus (Culiacan, Mexico).
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The development of Tuomo Manninen’s participation in Coventry Biennial 2025 has been supported by Spatial Practices in Art and Architecture for Empathetic Exchange (spacex), a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE).
