Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Teaches at Los Angeles Center of Photography

Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish American photographer and Emeritus Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Docent at the Aalto University School of Art, Design, and Architecture in Helsinki. 

Already in 1969—years before the self-portrait genre evolved from Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman as it did in the mid-70s—Minkkinen began what would become a personal quest, dedicating over five decades to a single concept, that of the unmanipulated nude self-portrait in communion and counterpoint with nature outdoors and urban settings.

Publications and solo and group exhibitions worldwide number in the hundreds. Minkkinen’s writings, teaching stints, academic and curatorial endeavors are extensive and international in scope as well. Workshops, in particular, have been held China, Brazil, Guatemala, Russia, Finland, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, and Italy not to mention in America in Florida, California, Maine, New Mexico, Colorado, and North Carolina.