The photographer Jaana Partanen's trilogy Everyday Alchemy, produced during the years 2000-2006, confers a gold and silver tinged value and significance on the various stages in human life.

The opening part, Cinderella (Tuhkimo), emphasises the dignity of everyday life. The works of the exhibition deal with a child's birth and early years of life, the change this brings about in the family's life and the father's role in particular in all this. The second part of the exhibition, Sleeping Beauty (Ruusunen), is a study of ageing and the theme of renunciation. In the centre are elderly women, from among whom Ms. Partanen finds the good fairy godmothers, those who have the ability to share their experience and wisdom as a gift to others. The third and last part of the exhibition, A Real Princess (Oikea prinsessa), explores the relationship between an adolescent daughter and her middle-aged mother. It also deals with change, renunciation and finding something new.

All three parts are products of interaction between the photographer and the people she is portraying. The process was long, slow and laborious. Video works in which there are no human figures are used to guide the themes of the still pictures on a more general level. At the same time as people as individuals are working on their own story of survival, the large pieces of which the world is composed fit together and fall apart like children's building blocks. The aesthetics of destruction is never very far away.