THE ATELIERI O.HAAPALA BOOK

The crowd-funded Atelieri O.Haapala book is finally here and it is so beautiful I almost want to cry!

The bi-lingual book -the texts are both in Finnish and English- features the studio's portraits and distinctive style of photography from the last decade (the studio/project was active 2008-2016 and produced more than 7000 portraits),  taking you on a journey trough an imaginary past:

Performers, artists, family portraits, guests at events who photographed themselves in the popup photo booth, as well as some of the studio's own project series and adventure scenarios...

...not to forget a few of Saara and Marcos, the photographers', most iconic theme-looks!

But apart from being a book with hundreds of beautiful creative images to aesthetically enjoy, this work functions as quite the emotional nostalgia pack for me, being filled with amazing people, dear friends, and oh-so many memories.



The Atelieri O.Haapala book is a superb coffee table book and will most definitely make a great Christmas present! Get your own book via their website.

SUPPORT THE ATELIERI O.HAAPALA BOOK!

Anyone who has rad my blog troughout the years would by this point be familiar with Atelieri O.Haapala,  the neo-victorian portrait studio by Saara Salmi and Marco Melander! The project went on for a decade, and there were many amazing themes, backdrops and set ups, with thousands of beautiful pictures as a result. I've had the pleasure to have my photo taken several time during the years, both in studio but mainly at the pop-up events.

And now they are aiming to make a beautiful and elaborate book out of it!

You can pre-order the book by supporting Atelieri's Indiegogo campaign, or support the book with smaller printed perks. And please do! You will love it - and I definitely want my copy too - so lets make this happen!

You can find most of Atelieri O.Haapalas photos in their Facebook albums.

Oh, and the image you see being edited at one spot in the film?
This is the final version; from Helsinki Burlesque Festival 2017.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atelieri-o-haapala-neo-victorian-photography-book-art#/

SUVI VINTAGE; THE SUMMER VINTAGE FAIR

 Last weekend we took a daytripp with the smaller version of our family (which would be the version sans Dag's half-brothers) and headed up to Tampere to attend the Suvi Vintage fair.
This year the theme was the 1930's and holidays.

I've made the poster for the event  three years in a row but never managed to check out the whole thing before now!


Dag saw the carousel the minute we arrived and that was it for him.


Det var kört så att säga, as one would say in Swedish.
And you know how it is with toddlers, it does not matter if they get to do something they want once or twice or five times, they cry just as much when it's over anyway. Well, as the vendor said, his best customers leave screaming!


So I left Eeeeengi! (that's what Dag shouts when he hears me calling for Eddi) with some coins at the carousel and went to check out the rest of the fair.

 And I immediately ran into this bunch!

 Lassi organises the whole thing.

 Pepper and her curls. She made Lassi's hat btw!

 Olivia and Those Nails!

Atelieri O.Haapala were there shooting their ever so popular cabinet portraits too. Here is the other half of the duo; Saara aka Onyxei Haapala.

 

The venue, Tallipiha, is a very pretty place!

 This little fella walking his grandma (or more likely mom, but grandma makes it sweeter!) was so cute!


And so were these very young dancers.

I actually did not buy anything! I'm not really good at shopping when there is a lot to choose from and when I don't really need anything. Which makes me rather smart in the end.
Well, I did get something lovely for both my sisters' future babies though!

Some days it's easy to go anywhere with kids -they are fine to just go along looking at things- and other days it is not. This could be described as the later. Here Dag is trying to make his most cute faces in order to get yet another round of the carousel.

 So we let him look at some real horses instead.

 And he got to ride a pony!

And then it was time to head home! But first some pancakes.

RUBIES > TURKU

We're off as the Rubies to Turku now to perform at Hylätty Huyvipuisto at Kåren tonight.
And here we are portrayed in our (kind of) Big Fish siamese-twin look by Atelieri O.Haapala earlier this year.

LOW KEY AND A LITTLE FLOWERS

This is how I dress up for work sometimes...

Atelieri O.Haapala was, as usual, present at the Helsinki Burlesque Festival a few weeks back with their pop up atelier. Here's one of my performer photos for this year, I love it!

The number I premiered was one I had planned for years. I spent a lot of time working on the costume, although I did not do everything myself. The headpiece, with leaves that turn into fans, was, as you know,  made for me by Fiona Timantti Millinery, and many of the flowers I used for my clothing was made by Anastasia, The Crazy Flower Maker. There is also a dress, which you can't see here, that Olivia Rouge sew me.

Although I had the costume ready planned in my head for a long time I sought up some inspiration pictures to go along while putting it together, some of which you can see here:

(pictures from retronaut.com)

You can see more of Atelieri O.Haapalas fabulous festival photos here.

OFF TO ASTORIA

Tonight it's time for the Finnish burlesque gala with most of the performers from all levels in Finland on stage, fundraising for the Helsinki Burlesque Festival next winer. We'll do one of our well known group routines but what I'm really looking forward to is seeing our student group of showgirls which  Tinker Bell and I have coached this autumn, performing for the first time with a routine we've made for them. Exciting!
The gala is sold out.

Picture from a few weeks back when we (and Atelieri O.Haapala) visited the Stockholm Burelsque Festival.

DESATURATED IN THE USUAL MANNER

Here's my Atelieri O.Haapala performer photo from this year's burlesque festival!

BURLESQUEPOLIS

Molla by Atelieri O.Haapala at Burlesquepolis

I can't wait to get my hands on this year's Atelieri artist portrait I took at the Helsinki burlesque festival! the back drop was inpired by Metropolis and Blade Runner, which I think you can spot from the featured photo above.

LA BELLE DÉCADENCE

For some time last year I had this idea of a stage costume, that would also include big flat fans.

An idea that we early in autumn developed into a project:

That some months later, this February, turned into this:

Photo by Kaylin Idora.

By Atelieri O.Haapala. (You saw the other portrait just recently too)

And this, on stage:
(the last picture might be considered nsfw. But you can always call it art...)

(I just love our faces here!)

Sepia toned photos by Emiliano Melandri,  coloured shots by Jari B.Miettinen.

You'll see this (and another act) in Milan in a couple of weeks!
That will most likely be my last show before my burlesque-mommy leave starts.