A voluntary photo book documented Helsinki's 2020 Black Lives Matter marches

The June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Finland needed a record, and no commission existed. A small voluntary working group — photographers, a designer, editors — took it on under the name 'No Justice, No Peace'.

A volunteer photo book capturing Finland's June 2020 BLM demonstrations in 40-plus photographs, its own diversity carried into pictures, typography and content.

Photographers Nkosinathi Sihlophe and Nora Sayyad shot the demonstrations; Annika Leppäaho designed the book so that its photographs, typography and content reflect the working group's diversity, with Sharron Todd editing English and Lida Sofia Hirvonen Finnish.

ADC*E Member Club Gold Award in Design Editorial Design; the book stands as a document that brings marginal perspectives into the Finnish visual field.

In June 2020, Black Lives Matter demonstrations filled Helsinki and other Finnish cities, part of the wave of protests that followed events in the United States. A small voluntary group working under the name 'No Justice, No Peace' set out to capture the Finnish chapter of it as a photographic book — no client, no fee.

The book consists of more than 40 photographs by its photographers, Nkosinathi Sihlophe and Nora Sayyad. What distinguishes it is that the diversity of the working group itself is taken into account in the photographs, the typography and the content: the project highlights people of colour holistically rather than as incidental subjects of news coverage.

Annika Leppäaho designed the book and handled its graphics, with Nkosinathi Sihlophe as co-creative director, Sharron Todd as English editor and Lida Sofia Hirvonen as Finnish editor. The team describes the work as bringing new marginal sounds to the field of the Finnish visual — a record made from inside the crowd it documents.

It is documentary design with the framing built in: who shot it, who edited it and how it is typeset all argue the same point the pictures make.

The volunteer structure is the story — the book exists because a self-organized team decided the demonstrations deserved a lasting record.

A design jury independently endorsed it: ADC*E's Member Club Gold for editorial design.

When the moment matters and no commission exists, a volunteer team that keeps its own diversity inside the design can produce the document institutions missed.

The project page records the ADC*E Member Club Gold Award in Design Editorial Design; no wider distribution details were reported, and the award page stands as the book's public record.