Erkki Luoma-aho's upcoming exhibition will continue the rock art theme of the photography exhibition seen in Laterna Magica's Tiii and Kellarigalleries in spring 2025. In the spring 2025 exhibition, Luoma-aho's rock art photographed in Africa was on display, and now in spring 2026 it will be the turn of rock art from Europe and Asia.

Rock paintings and drawings have been found in various locations from tens of millennia ago. Are they messages for contemporaries, perhaps for future generations? We don't know. We can only marvel at the creative power and precision with which they created the drawings and paintings.

I became interested in rock art when I participated in a trip organized by an Estonian group to explore the drawings of Lake Onega in 1991. At that time, I had not yet visited any domestic rock art sites. No rock drawings have yet been found in Finland.

I wanted to know more about human history, to which rock art seemed to provide one concrete approach. So I set out to explore, research and document rock art in the Nordic countries, Russia, Mongolia, India and Southern Europe, and even Africa.

One thing has always puzzled me: why the same drawing and painting themes repeat, even though the distance is tens of thousands of kilometers.

Above Erkki Luoma-aho's photograph Teloitus Uikujoella/Execution by the River Vyg