The Helsinki School is the short name for the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and the current show at Langhans Gallery is a "dialogue" among 12 artists from four academic generations — undergraduates, postgraduates, former students and faculty.

The Helsinki School is not limited by any specific discipline, nationality or geographic region. It does, however, claim to represent a special approach to thinking and teaching, with artists of each generation encouraged to "invent themselves" instead of simply following in the tradition of mentors. In the 30 years since the founding of the school, it has evolved from a program focused on social documentary and photojournalism to conceptual art photography. It has one of the best reputations in Europe for its high technical and visual quality, and also for its cutting-edge originality.

The artists in "Dialogue" were selected for the ways in which they embody different conceptual approaches to seeing the world. One of the best photographs to make this point is easy to miss, since it is unfortunately set alone in the busy entrance and cashier area of the gallery. Ville Lenkheri's Himalaya is a shot of a gray-haired elderly woman in black walking shoes and a white suit seemingly atop a Himalayan mountain peak, sitting on a clean white bench and protected safely by a glass enclosure. Lenkheri's single photo shows how we experience our virtual world, and particularly nature, but often do not have true contact with it.

An interesting series of photographs by Mikko Sinervo similarly reveals aspects of nature, in a landscape captured over a 24-hour period in the late fall, when there is little light in the northern lands. One shot captures the location exactly when day turns to night; another, in the morning when the sun comes up exceptionally late; and a third at the moment of sunrise, when the sky momentarily appears absolutely white. The result is a landscape, then just a glimmer of it, then a blank white vision.

Jorma Puranen's single photo is also inspired by a landscape, but one that he first noticed in a 17th-century painting found in an archival collection of art from an expedition to Lapland. Puranen returned to the location and realized that the landscape had not changed after 300 years, so he painted a board in shiny black lacquer and held it up to the landscape. He then photographed the reflection of the landscape on the board — a new way of seeing an old painting. Puranen's photo appears to be an abstract landscape painting, when it is in fact quite the opposite.

In the cellar, Santeri Tuori's mesmerizing video shows a little blonde boy playfully struggling to put on his red T-shirt in slow motion. This effort is either an exercise in modern dance movement or children's performance art.

On the gallery's top floor, Pernilla Zetterman's Yes is almost the antithesis of Tuori's video of innocence in motion. The photo shows a seated headless woman (the artist) with arms and hands confined within her pullover, as if she were in a straitjacket. Zetterman's subject is motionless and long past the age of innocence portrayed by Tuori.

Anni Leppala's series of photographs and photomontage from her Seedling installation also has to do with growing up: There are lots of buttons, wedding gowns with faceless brides, and paper-doll cutouts of women's dresses, along with women's figures reminiscent of Catholic imagery. One photo from this series, of a woman wearing a long red ribbon from her neck that gradually fades into a bleed, is among the best in the show.