Overview
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Bright gallery wall with several framed photographs and a text stand in front
Story 13 · July 21, 2026

They begin to live

ThoughtEncounter
This story picks up a thread: Only on the wall do the pictures begin to tell their story.
Thought

Today I picked up the finished framed pictures from Anu and I was thrilled. It is something entirely different from seeing the pictures on the screen all day and printing them small to get a first overview: what works and what does not, what belongs together, what comes out of it. But then they sit in a plain mat and hang in a frame, in a size that simply opens your heart.

They begin to live, and that is probably the moment I love most. The genuinely hard part, the sorting out, is behind you, and now they are allowed to show themselves, there on the wall in front of you. They set themselves apart from one another, they present themselves and they begin to tell their story.

01
“On the screen they are files. On the wall they are pictures.”
The wall
View along the gallery wall, framed photographs and beyond them the bright room with yellow chairs
The view along the wall, the way visitors see it
Two framed photographs above one another, a green water picture on top, a street corner with graffiti below
A picture from Heimat above a motif from the town
Widely framed photograph of a row of industrial trolleys in front of a concrete wall
Plenty of mat, little frame, so the picture gets room to breathe
Video: slow pan along the exhibition wall, past framed photographs and the information panel
Moving image · 0:11
Trace · A slow walk along the wall, shortly before the first guests arrive
Thought

It is only a small selection, printed and framed especially for the gallery in Hämeenlinna. I am leaving them here, in the hope that they make people think, that they bring joy, or that they remind someone of those who are long gone.

A picture can do so much, and the whole wonder of art only unfolds in looking at it and talking about it: the art of setting off more than the mere sight of a beautiful picture. The art of taking people along on your own journey, into your own inner world.

02
“I am leaving them here.”
Clip instead of frame
White information panel with Finnish text and QR code beside a clipped photograph of a painted skate park
The panel with the QR code, in Finnish, right next to the pictures
Two photographs hung with clips on a bright wall, a framed picture to the right
Two motifs held by clips alone, no glass, no frame
Large framed photograph of green blurred water and shoreline greenery
The large picture from Heimat that holds the room together
Video: pan across two clipped photographs and a framed picture on the wall
Moving image · 0:06
Trace · The clipped sheets on the wall, next to the framed works
Thought

It is my inner world that I lay open there. The pictures connect and they separate, they make you smile and sometimes shudder a little. But the point is this: that you feel something. When it touches you, when it reaches your inner self.

Not always, and not with everyone. But sometimes two inner worlds meet and begin to glow. That glow in the eyes of the people looking is what moves me again and again.

03
“Sometimes two inner worlds meet and begin to glow.”
The room
Bright exhibition room with track lights, colourful paintings on the wall and a long table with prints laid out
The room in the afternoon, the pictures for the evening laid out on the table
View through a doorway onto the picture wall, a text stand in front, the room with yellow chairs beyond
The way in, past the text about the exhibition
Two walls at an angle, framed photographs on the left, the open bright room on the right
Two walls, this small exhibition needs no more
Framed photographs on a wall, a passage behind them into a room with colourful paintings
My pictures and the others' works, under one roof
Encounter

Next to the pictures at Kulttuurikonttori hangs the panel with the QR code. Whoever wishes will find all 161 motifs behind it in the online gallery, can pick a favourite and order it from me. Printing happens at Raatikuva a few streets away, framing at Anu's for anyone who wants it. That way something stays here even once I am back in Celle.

Zur Onlinegalerie: roman-thomas.de/haemeenlinna ↗Geschichte 12: Eine Galerie für Hämeenlinna ↗
Thought

Thank you, dear Minttu, for letting me be here for this time and spend day after day doing nothing but looking. See you soon next year, and certainly with a new perspective on all of it.

They begin to live, and that is probably the moment I love most.“
Note from the exhibition
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Story 14: Kiitos, Hämeenlinna