Aggressively contemporary and historic art at Gallery plan b

Loveliest Girl in the World

Helsinki is not generally considered one of the globe’s meaner cities, but some people desperately want to escape it. These include some of the girls who live at an institution for kids whose parents were neglectful or abusive. Photographer Miina Savolainen takes them into the countryside for romantic portraits, often shot during what Finns call “the blue moment” (the first and last hour of sunlight, termed “the magic hour” in English.)

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( Gallery plan b / ) - Kermit Berg’s collage mixes vending machine drinks with workers in a Tokyo office.

The process is both collaborative and therapeutic. The 120 photos in “The Loveliest Girl in the World” (out of about 70,000 Savolainen has made) depict not just the grandeur of the Finnish wilderness and the subjects’ fairy-tale scenarios. They also show the process of gaining trust and confidence. In several suites of photos, shot over four or more years, the earlier pictures portray a girl who glares at the camera lens, if she’ll look its way at all. Later images reveal friendlier, more assured young women, partially mended by nature — and fantasy.

Shot in several regions of Finland — Savolainen drove about 125,000 miles to stage these scenes — the photos depict grand vistas and fancy dress. The girls chose their outfits, which tend toward the flowing and white. One wears a tiara. Another, an unwed mother at 16, elected to be photographed in front of a frozen lake, wearing her mother’s wedding gown.

The scenes aren’t always lovely. A few girls decided to pose at abandoned industrial sites, and some of the untrammeled locations are as harsh as they are beautiful. One shot, of a girl lying half-submerged in a fetal position in a partially flooded rowboat, is meant to symbolize rebirth. But it also suggests 19th-century British artist John Everett Millais’s famous painting of the drowned Ophelia, a romantic image of death, not transformation.

In Finland, “The Loveliest Girl in the World” is the best-selling photo book ever. That reflects, in part, the allure of its dramatic scenery. The photographs were shot in diverse formats and printed in various sizes, yet are nearly always horizontal, to emphasize the sweep of the land. But the photographs also represent the appeal of a modern fairy-tale moral: that people can take real strength from their invented selves. The Web site for Savolainen’s project is www.empoweringphotography.net.

Jenkins is a freelance writer.

Kermit Berg/Delna Dastur

on view through Nov. 20 at
Gallery plan b, 1530 14th St. NW; 202-234-2711; www.galleryplanb.com .

Moby: Destroyed

on view through Saturday at Irvine Contemporary/Montserrat House, 2016 Ninth St. NW; www.montserrathouse.com ; www.irvinecontemporary.com.

The Loveliest Girl in
the World

on view through Nov. 13 at
the Embassy of Finland, 3301 Massachusetts Ave. NW; 202-298-5821; www.finland.org .