Pingyao

The 15th China Pingyao International Photography Festival will be held between September 19th and 25th. It was started in 2001 and it is one of the major photography festivals in China. Every fall it presents several exhibitions from Asia, United States, Africa, Europe and Australia. This year it reflects on a subject of Home and Dreams.

In 2015 Latvia is represented by Ieva Epnere, Andrejs Strokins, Viktorija Eksta and the curator Inga Brūvere brought to the festival by Riga Photography Biennial.

Latvia’s exposition is composed of a series of photographs created by three young and talented artists who work mainly within the medium of photography, which analyse personally felt and current social problems. They combine an investigative interest in changes which have taken place in the environment over a short period – during a person’s lifetime. The changes are natural and in their own way, beautiful, but are still accompanied by an acute feeling of loss.

Ieva Epnere’s (1977) series, Zaļā zeme [Green Land] (2010) is a story about time – the past and present in a once active, but now quiet and abandoned town where she spent the summers of her childhood. In the works, the emphasis has been placed on the portrayal of people in the landscape. The artist has been led by a desire to capture and portray the atmosphere prevailing in the small town today, where life once buzzed next to a military airport (which has been overgrown by green grass in just a few years). The artist’s personal emotional experience has been transformed through social processes in society, with the world formed through the eyes of a child being harmonized with reality.

In his Cilvēki kāpās [People in the Dunes] (2011-2015) series, Andrejs Strokins (1984) examines the boundary between the city environment and nature at Bolderāja and at Daugavgrīva, areas on the outskirts of Rīga with an ancient and interesting history. After the Second World War, a town with typical Soviet era buildings spread out here in place of a fishing village, with a section of it being a closed-off military territory for many years. The photographer captures an environment and its current inhabitants, frozen in time, from a witty and human aspect.

Viktorija Eksta’s (1987) series Dievs. Daba. Darbs [God. Nature. Work.] (2013-2015) which was created over two years combines photographs and features from private archaeological performances. She takes photographs of herself, assuming the role of a farmer’s wife at an old farmstead. The old house is reconstructed in a way through the artist’s personal point of view and experience. Her actions remind us of children’s role play games providing an opportunity to enter the lives of other people. The young photographer’s depiction of an old farmer’s wife stimulates endearing and eerie feelings simultaneously, which are fed by the archetype of a lost era. The artist is able to impart a topicality to national values and to reflect on the grim demographic situation in the Latvian countryside in a captivating way.

Photo: Andrejs Strokins. From the series People in the Dunes, 2011-2015)