Zoom in on Kekkonen! Press Photographs

The press photographs in this exhibition tell the story of a great leader of the people President Urho Kekkonen, who was the ultimate outdoorsman and a passionate fisherman.

The photographs were taken during years 1952–1980, in moments when Urho Kekkonen was off-duty, on holiday, or after the official programme of events or state visits.​

When the formal suit of a statesman came off, the president turned into “Urkki of the people”: an exercising, hunting, fishing, cross-country skiing, virile man of the people, who loved literature and art.

Kekkonen made sure the photographers had something to photograph and the people something to look at. The president became the most photographed man in Finland.

Press photographers followed him everywhere, whether to Lapland’s freezing winds on the ice of the Somaslompolo lake or on a holiday on a Caribbean beach.

Urho Kekkonen Museum Tamminiemi
30.5.2019-19.12.2021

(closed 30.11.2020-31.1.2021)