MUNICIPAL COUNCIL
Sakari Piippo

After spending three hours in a municipal council meeting in Mäntsälä, Southern Finland, the attendees engage in a brief gymnastic break. The delegates wave their arms from side to side as directed in the high-ceilinged wood-laminate auditorium.

Representatives listen to the slowly undulating talks on last year's bottom line, the development of a school renovation project, and the vagaries of city zoning.

The meeting takes a total of five hours. In this time the participants are able to call the meeting to order, prepare the minutes, introduce and handle pressing issues, take a break to work out, report on developments, eat some sandwiches, ask clarifying questions, express differing opinions, announce an unavailability, accept negotiated terms, deliver resolutions for further preparation, give speeches, cast votes, suggest amendments, cancel amendments, remove items from the list of business, interrupt the meeting for a consultation, and drink lots of coffee. Also, a change is made to item four: "the word new is removed from the beginning of the sentence."

Municipal Council series is part of Some Observations on the Political System of Finland (2015– 2019), a documentary trilogy by photographer Sakari Piippo (b. 1981). It travels from the pinnacle of political power, Finnish government press briefings, to municipal council meetings and, at election time, to polling stations.

Instead of glorious headline-making election wins, power games between top politicians and decisions that intrigue and shock the nation, this quiet work examines the dry everyday toil in politics: wrinkled suit jackets, drawn-out council meetings, and the small but dignified ritual performed on one’s way to do the shopping – voting.

Some Observations on the Finnish Political System was exhibited at the Finnish Museum of Photography and released as a book in September 2019 by Kosmos.