Stripes from the blinds – portraits for Loimu magazine in Raahe

I photographed the portraits of dietitian Henna Piippo for a career story in Loimu, the magazine of the Finnish union for the natural, environmental and forest sciences, where she describes her path from a master of health sciences to a supervisor in occupational health care. The location was her own workplace, Terveystalo in Raahe.

Piippo is a lead dietitian, and her area covers North Ostrobothnia and Lapland apart from the Oulu region. I photographed her mid-shift in her own workplace, and nothing was brought in: the backgrounds are the walls, doors and furniture of the building itself.

I started in the consultation room, where the work shows as it is: the desk, the notepad, the keyboard and a consultation under way. A real appointment cannot be photographed, so the situation was set up, and I framed it so the other person stays in the foreground, back to the camera, and the eye goes straight to Piippo. A consultation room is a closed space, so a picture like this is the only way a reader sees the work behind the door.

An armchair stood by a window along the corridor, and the venetian blind drew stripes across the wall and her face. I framed it so the stripes run crosswise and miss her eyes, which keeps the pattern a pattern rather than a distraction. The notepad and pen stayed in her lap, the same tools as in the consultation room.

The set ended on the move. In the stairwell the white walls and steel railing gave an empty background for the black jumper, nothing drawing attention away. The last was taken in a doorway, where a blue and white patterned textile and a pale wooden door split the frame, and the laptop under her arm says the work carries on outside that room.

The pictures ran in the career story in Loimu issue 2/2026. Online they follow the text from the consultation room to the stairwell and the armchair, and the captions tie each to the part of the story it belongs to.

Read the whole story: loimu.fi