City on the Sea: Fragments of (Brief Returns to) Rīga, Latvia
After years of shooting, months of brewing, and hours of installation, today opened my new photography show at the Hosmer Art Gallery in Northampton. Here is a small preview, accompanied by my introduction to the show. Please come and enjoy! I hope to see many of you at the reception on Saturday, January 15th, from 2 to 4:30 p.m.
*************** When I am asked where I come from, I answer “Latvia”. More often than not, another question follows: where is Latvia? Perhaps it is because it is such a new country that its humble contours, shaped like a windblown dress, haven't yet been drawn on some of the world's maps. And yet, Latvia has been independent for 20 years now, and is part of NATO and the European Union. It has sent out its sons and daughters into the world, but your chances of running into one of them are quite slim: there are only 2 million of us.The wind that blows 'the dress' arrives from the Baltic Sea, in Northeast Europe - half of Latvia's border is sculpted by its sandy coastline, pinned down by tall proud pine trees and sparingly sprinkled with amber, Latvia’s national stone. The wind is bone-chilling in the long gray winters, fresh and playful in the bright explosion of green-blue summers, with their long days and short nights. Before Latvia regained its independence from the USSR in 1990, this Baltic wind had for a long time been promising freedom, planting daring thoughts of escape into the young minds, and strengthening the resilience of those still left behind after the storms of revolutions and uprising, world wars and stalinist purges had swept through, and quieted down.
Like all European countries between Germany and Russia, Latvia was subject to politically motivated land disputes between the large neighboring empires, and Latvia’s people subjected to hundreds of years of foreign aggression, occupation, and displacement. The last of those years were marked by the forceful annexation of Latvia by the USSR, which lasted from 1940 until the singing revolution of 1990, and the massive deportations to Siberian labor camps following the annexation. Remarkably, Latvian identity, its language, the strong tradition of singing, and millions of songs (many of them forbidden during the soviet times), survived. Even after losing some of its most beautiful buildings to WWII bombings and to destructive Soviet nationalization policies, Latvia’s capital Rīga, perched on the river Daugava where it meets the Baltic Sea waters, remains a rich hub of European culture, complete with an ancient fortress, medieval cathedrals, and cobbled street labyrinths, with entire streets graced by architectural jewels of Art Nuovo and National Romanticism.
But centuries of upheavals have also left the country bleeding. Latvia was the worst hit country in the world in the recent economic recession, its GDP shrinking more than 20%, and the unemployment rates going up from 5 to almost 20 percent in only 2 years. Life expectancy for men has gone down to 67 years, not least of it due to alcoholism. Last time I was in Latvia, in September of 2009, when I took most of these photographs, dozens of schools and hospitals were closing; salaries, pensions, and all types of government subsidies were being slashed; half-built buildings were standing abandoned. Latvia had entered into deep “austerity mode”.
These photographs are of the city of Rīga, and its ordinary people caught in ordinary situations. They are taken in-the-moment, each a spontaneous slice of time and place, as I was reacting to a certain situation or emotion. With these images I would like to convey the richness and the strength of my countrymen's spirit, as it transcends the time and place, aching under strain facing the unknown, and to show that loneliness can coexist with comradeship, agony with repose, vulnerability with strength, passion with nostalgia, doubt with lightness, and the mundane with the extraordinary.
