Photographs that leak
Antti Yrjönen is an award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer with a certain impatience for the generic. Much of his recent work has focused on conflict and upheaval through their effects on civilians and daily life—an angle that can disappear when war is reduced to uniforms, strikes and spectacle.
Yrjönen is suspicious of images that feel too self-contained. He prefers photographs that leak: a hand at the edge, a misplaced object, a glance that points outside the frame—evidence that the scene continues beyond what the camera can hold. He looks for tension, humour and the small contradictions that make pictures feel believable. The goal is not a good photograph, but an interesting one: an image that couldn’t have been staged, and doesn’t collapse into stereotype.
The work can tilt into the surreal without ever feeling staged. That same instinct carries him from public moments to private ones, from the obvious front of events to side doors and margins.
Colleagues often describe a particular combination in his work: an ability to frame a story with clarity while still finding the extra you didn’t know to ask for—the strange or tender note that shifts the whole piece. They also point to how close people let him come, and how the photographs can feel less like observation than shared space: the viewer beside the subject, not above them.
Yrjönen studied photojournalism at Tampere University and has worked extensively in Ukraine and in complex contexts including Somalia, Syria, Myanmar and South Sudan. His work has been published by The New York Times, National Geographic, BBC, Le Temps, Bloomberg, Haaretz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Condé Nast Traveller, Helsingin Sanomat and Suomen Kuvalehti, among others.
His photography has been exhibited in Finland and internationally, and recognised with multiple awards. He is currently developing a book project on polycrisis—tracing how the war in Ukraine reshapes lives far beyond Europe.
Alongside photography, Yrjönen writes and speaks on visual culture, journalism ethics, media critique and press freedom, including a regular column for Journalisti magazine.
If you’re commissioning an editorial or documentary story—or looking for a collaborator who can move between fast news and longer-form work—he’s available for domestic and international assignments.
Awards and honours
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Awarded by Giga, the UNICEF–ITU initiative working to connect every school to the internet. The 2026 edition drew 4,747 images from 97 countries and focused on the urgency of connectivity in fragile and crisis-affected settings.
The winning image, photographed in Ukraine, shows mathematics teacher Olena Loboda giving a remote lesson in Chernihiv during the fourth academic year of the full-scale war.
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Selected for the Festival of Ethical Photography’s Open Call for the Nonprofit World, a programme highlighting documentary work made with or for nonprofit organisations.
The selected series, Classrooms Below Ground, was made for Finn Church Aid in Ukraine. It looks at education during wartime: classrooms in metro stations, shelters and adapted spaces, and the everyday effort to keep school possible when safety, routine and childhood are all under pressure.
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Shortlisted in the Single Shot category of the World Report Award, organised by the Festival of Ethical Photography in Lodi, Italy. The award is an established international platform for documentary photography and photojournalism, with shortlisted work exhibited and promoted through the festival.
The selected image, photographed in Ukraine, shows mathematics teacher Olena Loboda giving a remote lesson in Chernihiv during the fourth academic year of the full-scale war.
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Awarded by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists in Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition.
The winning image, photographed in Ukraine, shows mathematics teacher Olena Loboda giving a remote lesson in Chernihiv during the fourth academic year of the full-scale war. The jury noted that the photograph offered an unusual way of telling the story of the war, conveying hope and continuity rather than only darkness.
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Recognised by Editkilpailu, the Finnish Magazine Media Association’s annual competition for the best magazine media work and makers in Finland.
The honourable mention was for a Tekoja story photographed in the Kyaka and Rwamwanja refugee settlements in Uganda. The story looked at fashion as work, self-expression and dignity in communities shaped by displacement.
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Awarded by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists in Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition.
The winning image was photographed in Marakwet, Kenya, and shows a woman playing football barefoot on a grass field, wearing a long green dress. She was taking part in a women’s football group that practises weekly and hopes to play against a team from neighbouring West Pokot. In Kenya’s North Rift region, sports tournaments are used deliberately to bridge divides and build trust among groups that have fought each other.
The jury described the photograph as beautiful, almost poetic and not a typical sports image, noting the movement, the reflected light and the bare feet as details that made the image stand apart.
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Recognised by the Finnish Magazine Media Association for a body of magazine work.
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Shortlisted for the public vote in Finnish Press Photos, Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition, organised by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists.
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Awarded by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists in Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition.
The winning image is a photograph from the Left Alliance election-night event in Helsinki, after the party lost five seats in the parliamentary elections. The jury noted that the photograph stood apart from conventional political imagery and carried strong emotion.
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Shortlisted for the public vote in Finnish Press Photos, Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition, organised by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists.
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Recognised by Editkilpailu, the Finnish Magazine Media Association’s annual competition for the best magazine media work and makers in Finland.
The honourable mention was for Aleppo, My Beloved, a Tekoja story from Syria about Aleppo after years of war and the 2023 earthquake. Combining reporting, photography and magazine design, the story focused not only on destruction, but on memory, everyday life and people’s deep attachment to a city they had endured, lost and continued to love.
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Honourable Mention in the Reportage category of Finnish Press Photos, Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition.
The recognised series documented how attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure affected civilians, focusing on the everyday consequences of damaged heating, electricity and basic services during the war.
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Awarded by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists in Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition.
The winning image is a photograph of an Elokapina protester being removed from outside the Finnish Parliament House in Helsinki. According to the judges, the image departed from the usual visual language of demonstrations and gave voice to a young generation acting on climate change.
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Honourable Mention in the Reportage category of Finnish Press Photos, Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition. The reportage from Kuhmoinen, mainland Finland’s oldest municipality by average age, asks what it is like to live one’s youth in an ageing place.
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Shortlisted for the public vote in Finnish Press Photos, Finland’s main annual photojournalism competition, organised by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists.
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Awarded as one of Finland’s established major journalism prizes, given annually since 1975 for influential journalistic work.
The 2020 award recognised Liisa Huima, Markus Jokela, Hannamari Shakya and Antti Yrjönen for organising Poikkeustila 2020 (State of Emergency 2020), a collective documentary photography project created as the Covid-19 pandemic changed everyday life in Finland.
Nearly 200 photographers took part in the project, which the jury described as both a photojournalistic achievement and a historical document of Finnish life during the state of emergency.
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Finalist in the Photojournalism category of the Finnish Photo Awards, organised by the Finnish Professional Photographers Association. The competition recognises professional photographic work across different fields, with photojournalism judged as one of its own categories.
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Awarded by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists for a photograph from the centre of Finland’s 2019 government crisis.
The image shows resigned prime minister Antti Rinne listening to President Sauli Niinistö at the Presidential Palace while Centre Party chair Katri Kulmuni watches from the side.
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Awarded by the Finnish Association of Photojournalists for a photograph of a member of parliament, Teuvo Hakkarainen, lying in the bed of his so-called sauna apartment in Helsinki. According to the judges, the image turned a political expenses story into a strangely ordinary, human, and revealing scene.
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Awarded by the Finnish Book Art Committee for In the Neighbourhood. The Beautiful Books selection recognises books as designed, printed and produced objects.
