Uldis Briedis

Uldis Briedis (1940) is well-known as a long-time photographer for the newspaper Diena. During the Soviet period he worked as a photojournalist for the newspaper Padomju Jaunatne, as well as the Liepāja newspapers Komunists and Ļeņina Ceļš. Over almost fifty years of active work as a photographer his work has been published countless times in many press publications. On several occasions he was arrested while carrying out his work. Uldis Briedis' name is closely associated with the most significant achievements of photojournalism in Latvia in the second half of the 20th century. He has received several awards, more than once has been recognised as Best Press Photographer (1984 and 1988), and was awarded the Prize of the Latvian Journalists' Union (1988). In 2010 Neputns publishing house released the book Time Hunter, dedicated to the artist and compiled by Laima Slava. In 2011, he was awarded the Order of the Three Stars.

In 1975, historian and musician Ingvars Leitis and photojournalist Uldis Briedis went on a cycling tour from Rīga to Vladivostok lasting 6 months and 5 days, under various weather conditions, on public roads and off-road, covering 13 000 km in total. This daring journey was officially sanctioned as a trip by non-staff authors of the Latvian magazine Zvaigzne. The actual goal of the journey was to search for descendants of their compatriots in former Latvian colonies, people who had come to the Russian Empire at various times and under various circumstances, both those whose predecessors had gone to Siberia in the 19th century because they had been promised land and those among whose ancestors there had been lawbreakers expelled by the Tsarist regime. The travellers visited around 30 Latvian villages throughout the territory of the Russian Empire and experienced particularly harrowing encounters in places where Soviet deportations and the Gulag were still in living memory. The reports by Ingvars Leitis and Uldis Briedis had a short life in the magazine Zvaigzne: after two instalments, a third report was brutally prohibited.

Event in Latvian

Curator: Inga Brūvere

Organizer: Riga Photography Biennial in cooperation with Association of Culture Institutions of Riga City Council, exhibition hall Riga Art Space

Image: Uldis Briedis, Dance With a Cook - Former Prosecutor in the Spirit of Zorba the Greek (1975, October)