Saana Hellsten is a Finnish documentary photographer and creative director based in London. Working with a pocket-sized Ricoh GR IV, she photographs people and places as she moves through the world, from festival dancefloors across Europe to the Himalayas. Her unstaged portrait, taken in a pre-school classroom in Naivasha, Kenya, is a finalist in the Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026 at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Alongside her photography, Saana has run Studio Hellsten since 2016, working across brand identity, art direction and packaging design. As a freelance creative and design director, she has worked with leading branding agencies in London and New York on global FMCG, beauty, lifestyle and luxury brands. Her work has received a Gold at The Dieline Awards and a Silver Cube at the ADC Awards, has been featured in several publications, such as Fast Company, It’s Nice That and The Dieline, and has been exhibited at the HfG Archive in Ulm.

She studied packaging design at the Lahti Institute of Design and earned her master’s degree with distinction from Pratt Institute in New York. Originally from Lahti, Finland, she has lived and worked also in Helsinki, New York, Berlin and Avellino, Italy.