Jóvenes Héroes

DA, 2006. Softcover. 95 pages. 31 x 25 cm. Text in Spanish and English. Used. VG+. Lehtola is known for his portraits of young people and about youth counterculture in Finland in the 90s. Photographs capture teenagers, middle-class kids. These younger boys and girls are in their stage of ‘firsts’; first smokes, first kisses, first drinks, first crushes. Alone at their rooms or adolescent groups in social interaction at clubs, cityscapes or urban places. The portraits are mostly close-ups and many subjects are under influence of drugs and alcohol. These children are vulnerable and unsafe and he somehow involved in their «games», participating in their lives while he is documenting them. This catalogue, published on the occasion of photographer Jouko Lehtola’s exhibition in 2006 at the art gallery DA2 (Spain), seems fragile but also very raw.