Pentti Sammallahti’s Here Far Away gathers photographs made between 1964 and 2011, spanning more than four decades and nearly as many countries. Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in 2012, this 256-page volume was conceived as the photographer’s first major retrospective book. Its long chronology gives the work room to register not as a succession of destinations, but as an extended practice of looking across changing places and times.
Sammallahti approaches the world as an attentive wanderer. His subjects include people and animals encountered amid ordinary circumstances, and his distinction lies in finding beauty and wonder without making the everyday seem grandiose. The geographic breadth of the book is therefore balanced by an intimate scale of observation: travel supplies the setting, while modest encounters provide its continuity. Viewed together, photographs from distant countries and different decades reveal a consistent regard for what might otherwise pass unnoticed.
The retrospective also carries particular significance within the history of photographic publishing. Sammallahti is recognized for his command of both photographic printing and mechanical reproduction, as well as for innovative printing methods and his renewed use of the portfolio form. Here Far Away brings that concern with the printed image into a substantial hardcover monograph, connecting the act of photographing with the practical and aesthetic demands of putting photographs into circulation on the page.
For a collector, the book’s importance rests less on unsupported notions of scarcity than on its scope and coherence. It offers a concentrated account of a career represented in major international collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, while showing why Sammallahti’s work has mattered to published photographic art. As both retrospective survey and printed object, Here Far Away provides a substantial point of entry into his sustained attention to ordinary life, distant places, and the expressive possibilities of reproduction.
