At this critical time, with issues of global health and environmental impact at the forefront, MAP6’s Finland: The Happiness Project explores themes around the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, which in 2020 ranked Finland as the most content nation for the third year running.

Although Finland is affluent, the United Nations says it’s not money alone that makes a country happy but six key factors: personal income, social support, life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and levels of corruption. Finland scores well on all of these but particularly so on generosity.

With this in mind, MAP6 visited Finland to try to understand why its people are so happy. The resulting nine projects with diverse viewpoints form a collective whole that questions and presents ideas about how we can live healthier, happier and more positive lives.

MAP6 is a collective of 9 photographers who make work about the complex relationships between people and place. Annually, MAP6 travels somewhere new, to create a collective photographic impression of that location. At the heart of the group is collaboration, which takes many forms – from working together when picture-making to editing and directing each other’s images.