How does a country learn to remember a war it never wants to forget?
In Finland, the answer is woven into everyday life — through school, through cinema, through family albums, and through the rifles handed to over 70% of young men who are legally required to serve in the military. In War is a Disaster, Finnish artist Henri Airo spent seven years photographing memorial rituals and museums, digging through army propaganda archives, and pulling images from his own family's past to trace how the memory of the Winter and Continuation Wars — fought against the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1944 — continues to shape Finnish identity today. Both wars ended in defeat, yet they are held up as proof of national survival. That tension is where this book begins.
Airo doesn't just document history — he questions the stories we tell about it. By placing his own photographs alongside wartime propaganda and candid family snapshots, he reveals how personal and collective memory blur into one another, and how myths quietly become convictions. A war film costume designer stopping to photograph a uniform. A group of players in a war game instinctively acting out death. These small moments carry the full weight of inherited ideology — and War is a Disaster has the rare ability to make that weight visible, without ever becoming heavy-handed.
What the book ultimately asks is something far bigger than Finland: when does remembering a war become a way of preparing for the next one?
This is not a book that gives easy answers. It is a book that sits with the discomfort of the question — and invites you to do the same.
The Most Beautiful Books selection 2024
by The Finnish Book Art Committee
Main prize
Encontros da Imagem Photobook Award 2025
by Encontros da Imagem, Portugal
Main prize
Photo/Frome Photobook Award 2024
by Photo/Frome Festival, UK
Shortlisted
Photo-Text Book Award 2025
Les Rencontres d’Arles, France
Finalist
Finnish Photobook Award 2024
by Finnish Museum of Photography
& Hippolyte Gallery
