On May 15, 2020, eleven Estonian photographers – Peeter Langovits, Eve Kiiler, Arno Mikkor, Raul Mee, Daisy Lappard, Meeli Küttim, Andres Teiss, Heiko Kruusi, Egert Kamenik, Raigo Pajula and Airi Leon – captured the look and fluidum of our capital for future generations, in one day. The results are stored in exhibition and book.

The reinvigorated idea of the Museum of Photography comes from a similar photo campaign of the photographer Jüri Vendelin from years ago, named A Day in Tallinn; its name was borrowed with the approval of the maestro. In order to revive the tradition, the Museum of Photography will always host a photo day on the same date, May 15, as a major date for the capital. This is the day to mark the granting of Lübeck city rights to Tallinn in 1248. The catch of the joint photo hunt by photographers and the Museum of Photography is a gift and a visual representation of history at the same time. Over the years, a timeline of pictures will appear, reflecting the growth and development of the birthday child, and in the future it will be exciting to explore how the capital of Estonia was in any given point in time and how it has changed.

This year’s photo hunt was particularly important because the situation caused by the global COVID-19 crisis allowed for finding exciting and shifting moments in urban life. On May15, though we were about to get out of the state of emergency and the city was reviving, the atmosphere still seemed different and a strange fluidum was floating over Tallinn. Something in this space and time was different than before, and this strange moment can be sensed and seen in the photo results of A Day in Tallinn.

The different places of Tallinn were divided into separate shooting areas between 11 photographers. We asked the photographers for their regional preference and it matched the Museum of Photography’s vision well. It’s always easier to take pictures of something you know, but it’s also exciting to discover something new. So the process of dividing up the capital went completely painlessly.

In the future, the Museum of Photography plans to make the participation in A Day in Tallinn a competitive and international event, as was the case in previous years. The goal is to make photo hunting more exciting for the participating photographers, and certainly the viewing angles of foreign photographers will differ from those of local participants. In this way, the view of the Estonian capital will certainly become more diverse.

This exhibition is already part of the visual heritage of Estonia and the Museum of Photography.