Time is pivotal in Nelli Palomäki's art where all images somehow mirror the artist; it's about what time does with us, and how time defines and consumes us. She explores the tradition of the classic black-and-white portrait and manages to bring to photography the qualities that it had long ago.
— Estelle af Malmborg
Nelli Palomäki, a Finnish photographer born in 1981 in Forssa, lives and works in Karkkila and Helsinki, Finland. She graduated from the Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture in Helsinki.
Known for her timeless portraits of children and young adults, her work emphasizes the fragility and silence of the shared moment with her subject, as well as the notion of the uncomfortable portrait. Palomäki’s photographs explore growth, family relationships, memory, and our often problematic ways of perceiving ourselves.
Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. Notable solo exhibitions include the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki in 2016, the Ordrupgaard Art Museum in Copenhagen, Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2012, Kulturhuset in Stockholm in 2018, and the Turku Art Museum in 2025. Her photographs have also been featured in group exhibitions at the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, the Daegu Photo Biennale in South Korea, MACRO Testaccio in Rome, and the Aperture Gallery in New York.
Her exhibition Shared was shown in Helsinki in 2016, then in Berlin, at the Finnish Institute in Stockholm, and in Vichy as part of the Portrait(s) Photography Festival in 2018. In 2025, the Turku Art Museum dedicated a solo exhibition to her titled Holds, bringing together several series, including her most recent, The Ladder.