Modernisation in Europe and the Loss of Culture.

Suvilahti Redevelopment Project.

Finland.
Photographs and text by Adam Monaghan.

Helsinki and its neighbouring regions are changing at an unprecedented rate. Across the city, public water fronts and woodlands are being cleared for private developments. Most neighbour-hoods are seeing their low-rise brutalist 1970s malls demolished. There are, of course, voices of descent but, as everywhere, they are often tolerated and then duly forgotten. We cannot deny that there is much to celebrate about some of the new buildings: those such as the library will bring great community benefits. However, many others are private ventures, aimed at generating money, first, and then civic responsibility second. Trends from elsewhere around the world should at least lead us to be wary of that here in Helsinki.

Suvilahti is an area of Helsinki, situated on the coast to the east of the city centre. For the past hundred years it has been home to a variety of energy plants, from steam turbines at the start of the 20th century to gas production and storage through to the still operational Helsinki Energia power plant. Many of the structures have been classed to be of national architectural significance. Since the decommissioning of gas works, the site has been used for many cultural events, such as the Flow Festival (since 2007) and Tuska Festival (since 2011). There is a skate park and in recent years a long ‘official’ graffiti wall. But the area is undergoing rapid and drastic changes. Lesser buildings have already been demolished. The graffiti wall was removed in June 2022 and the skate park will possibly not survive through 2023.

Perhaps every generation witnesses these changes and feels such losses, in some form. No city ever stands still and development and change are inevitable. But largely civic spaces such as Suvilahti – even those that might be seen as run down, litter strewn ‘wastelands’ – form a crucial part of our youth and are febrile creative environments. Importantly, they are often the areas that those ‘without’ have some freedom. I do not profess to be a student of graffiti or well versed in its long history but giving a voice to those who otherwise remain unheard, is a perennial thread of its existence. Last winter the graffiti wall still stood at Suvilahti. Consequently, even on the coldest days, deep in snow, there were people present. Spray-ing, chatting, sipping a beer or coffee and smoking. Sometimes even a chair and speaker; there for the long haul, despite the plummeting temperatures. The graffiti wall was removed in the summer of 2022 and consequently, this winter the area is largely dead. Naturally, skaters are not able to ply their trade until the snow melts and with no graffiti painters around, Suvilahti feels noticeably barren. 

Perhaps it is not so surprising that alongside graffiti, Suvilahti has been home to a skatepark since 2011. Skating is another past time and skill that often grows in the margins. Whether that’s jumping over fences to use unfilled pools in LA in the 70s or being pushed out of public spaces by private security guards and ‘No Skating’ signs, it is often not a welcomed sport. My upbringing and background cannot help but impose class judgements about this unnecessary hostility towards skating. It might be worth noting that Helsinki is an incredibly, perhaps even ridiculously, safe environment. It regularly sits in the top ten of the best cities in the world in which to live and key to that statistic is safety.

Photos from top;
Graffiti artists working on the wall. December 2021.

Photo above:
Audience watches Iggy Pop at Flow Festival. Summer 2016.

It is one of the pleasures and paradoxes of Suvilahti that despite almost being a wasteland – litter, empty spray cans, graffiti, and even still on occasion an abandoned porno magazine – it is also used by all ages and creeds. I have never once felt threatened walking across it’s empty, windswept expanse - even in the dead of winter darkness. Similarly, the same attitude has flowed from everyone I meet there. Skaters support and clap one another; they help when one of their brethren fall and cheer when they succeed. The scariest looking Death Metal fans, (there for Death Fest or Tuska festival) have been nothing but smiles and willing to pose for my camera. Artists and DJs have been happy to open their studios too. As a photographer, the hardest quarry are graffiti painters. But I sympathise entirely with their reasons for not wanting to be photographed; past policing policy has left many scarred and being recognised is not healthy for their longevity.

My involvement in Suvilahti is ultimately very straightforward. It is based on recording how the region looks now, documenting how the space is used, with festivals, businesses, skaters, graffiti painters, performers, artists... and teens just growing up there. How the architecture looks now, how it cracks and fades, before renovations smooth it over. How stickers and posters look now. Both how they age and peel but also their typeface, their layout, their language and the events they advertise. As of January 2023, I have been shooting at Suvilahti for over 18 months and plan to continue until access is no longer possible. I have no special contacts and so once the area becomes an actual building site, I envisage being excluded.
Perhaps that is a fitting end to the project, given its original ethos? 

Inevitably, there are two sides to every coin. The redevelopment of Suvilahti is creating new opportunities for businesses. Unlike many cities, Helsinki has admirably resisted the urge to swamp itself in multinationals. (Helsinki did not have a Starbucks until 2012 and even then it was only at the Airport. GAP never made it to Fin-land). And so Suvilahti is already seeing independent bike shops and cafés appear. Then there is the on/off discussion about one of the cities major Museums relocating there too. These are of course not bad things - quite the opposite. But they do intrinsically serve a different audience. And perhaps those that lose the most are those that have the least power to change their situation. It was ever thus…. No doubt, like many, I woke up to the changes at Suvilahti too late. As an inhabitant of the city you are aware of the changes, but life often forces other priorities upon you and these sometimes significant alterations may at first only sneak up in your periphery. As a photographer I already lament the shots I have missed.

Perhaps my dismay at the redevelopment is that the city loses something important, something that gives it some bite. Those that reside in Suvilahti now – artists, shibari workshops, circus acts – will eventually be priced out and move to the next area that is on the slide and awaiting its upturn. Perhaps my sadness is that, at present in Helsinki, these things are still possible right here in the city centre. Artists can still afford studios, just. In ten years’ time, those same artists and DJs will no doubt be another fifteen kilo-metres out of the city centre. Festivals will move outwards too. Any marginalised activity will be marginalised further. All of this affects the texture of the city and the potential excitement it holds. Cities need a little edginess. They need some buzz, some vibrancy. Safe is nice, but it is also clinical and dull.
To remove all of this grittiness and replace it with sanitised “creative” spaces feels a little like New Years Eve: enforced fun with an entrance fee. We all have memories of places we loitered in our teens. Spaces where no one stopped you. Mine was the back of the GPO with its small bike track carved into the dirt. It felt illicit even though it was public grounds. You got to mix with the kids older than yourself. To be excited, scared and in awe; hanging on their coat tails. Of course, one inevitably rose tints these memories with age. And that is also now exacerbated by the idea that pre mobile phones and social media we had unparalleled freedom.
Like all memories, I am sure that is part truth and part myth; George Orwell demonstrated as much in the wonderful Coming Up for Air back in 1939. But even so, they are formative experiences; places we grow and test ourselves, make mistakes and learn. Places we might wander back through, at some future date, and smile - or not. The myth can implant itself as easily as the truth, and one may discover one has formed oneself on the basis of an errant memory.

Ultimately, this is why I feel documentary photography to be so important: this period will quickly pass and stories of skate parks, graffiti walls and urban festivals will become the things of local folklore. Like the pictures of Manhattan in the early 1970s, one day the graffiti strewn skate bowls and abandoned mannequins right here in the centre of Helsinki will seem like scenes from a dream. Documentary photography has many strands, from government sanctioned projects (such as the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the US or the Mass Observation Archive in the UK) to people’s family albums of faded Kodak prints or clattering reels of slides. It is an umbrella capable of housing professional photographers and amateur photographers alike and it necessarily straddles the personal and the public. For although each person tells us something of the time - its fashions, its politics, its tensions – they are also still people. Individuals with their own stories. Photography might be immortalised in museums and libraries, rarefied and fetishized, but it is also present in every home. We all have had the experience of holding a photograph, stabbing at a face with a finger, ‘Oh, him… him… what’s his name…?’ And without photography, we might not have only forgotten his name, but that he even existed.

Thanks for reading.