Elanto’s photograph treasure now online
The picture collection full of memories of Co-operative society Elanto has been published as a separate collection on the Helsinki City Museum’s Finna page at hkm.finna.fi. The photographs invite you to visit the creameries and restaurants of yesterday’s Helsinki, the streets of the city centre as well as the suburbs.
To start exploring the Helsinki City Museum collection of almost three thousand photographs and items of Elanto on the Finna page, you may want to start with the predefined subject searches presenting the bread factory, pictures of children and labels of grocery packages, for example. Once you’ve gotten started, you can continue browsing the pictures using your own search terms. The web-quality photographs may be downloaded and used freely as long as Helsinki City Museum and the name of the photographer are mentioned as the source of the image.
Elanto’s photograph collection stems from the work of the co-operative movement
Co-operative society Elanto was formed in 1905 around a bread factory. Over the decades, a couple of bread stores grew into a network of hundreds of shops covering entire Helsinki. Generations of Helsinki residents got to enjoy Elanto’s famous bread and the varied services provided by the co-operative society, covering the entire course of life from birth to death.
Elanto published its own magazine, used a lot of advertising and photographed and recorded its activities as well as life in Helsinki in general. This created a valuable collection of photographs and items, now property of Helsinki City Museum. Most of the materials date from the 1930s through the 1950s. After a couple of decades of studying and digitalisation, the majority of the collection is now available for public.
Explore the Elanto photograph collection
