AUGUSTA — The Maine State Museum’s newest exhibition featuring the photography of Kosti Ruohomaa will open at 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 18. Free museum admission will be offered on the opening day. A special members’ preview reception will be held on July 16 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Kosti Ruohomaa, who died in 1961, was a Finnish-American photographer from Rockland whose work was widely published in news magazines of the 1940s and 1950s such as Life and Look. He was also published in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Ruohomaa was known especially for his images of Maine and New England, particularly photographic essays that captured the vast land and seascape, drama of the seasons, richness of rural life and integrity of Maine people.

“Kosti Ruohomaa brought a depth and dramatic artistry to his work that distinguished it from news documentary photography of the day,” said Deanne Bonner-Ganter, the exhibition curator of the Maine State Museum. “In the exhibit, visitors will see Ruohomaa’s many insightful photographs of rural people, but his work to capture settings bathed in fog, the light of night and dawn, and the myriad moods of winter truly set him apart and reveal his originality.”

The exhibition at the museum includes about sixty images, as well as vintage magazines in which Ruohomaa’s photographs were published and personal scrapbooks that Ruohomaa kept to document his career. This exhibit is based on Bonner-Ganter’s decades-long research. A biography about Ruohomaa by Bonner-Ganter and published by Down East, is scheduled to be released in September.

The Passionate Photographer: Kosti Ruohomaa’s Maine and Magazine Photojournalism will be on exhibit until July 2016 and is also part of the Maine Photo Project, a year-long celebration of photography that features a wide variety of programs and exhibits at 32 cultural organizations across Maine. For more information on the photography project, visit www.mainephotoproject.org.

The Maine State Museum is located at 230 State St. and is open Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

FMI: 207-287-2301, www.mainestatemuseum.org.