The Riga Photography Biennial NEXT 2023 publication explores “awkward topics” people often avoid talking about as they spark negative emotions and bitter conflicts with its main focus on the ongoing war in Ukraine. Ukrainian visual culture researcher, writer, and curator Kateryna Iakovlenko in her essay Exactly That Body: Images Against Oppression reflects on “sensitive” images and how they can unite and empower those who experience violence directly. The catalogue exhibition Safe Light curated by Evita Goze and Yulia Krivich features nine young Ukrainian artists, acknowledging photography as a tool which constructs and shapes national identities, nurtures resistance, documents war crimes and can also be used as a coping mechanism during wartime in order to hold on to one's sanity. Art historian and art critic Ugnė Marija Makauskaitė introduces the winner of the Seeking the Latest in Photography! Award 2023 Lithuanian photographer Ieva Baltaduonytė. Curator Tīna Pētersone interviews the winner of the Emerging Curator! prize Laima Daberte. The generously illustrated publication also provides more information on the Biennial’s exhibitions, events and artists.

Exhibition Safe Light

Participants: Vic Bakin (UA), Nazar Furyk (UA), Mykhaylo Palinchak (UA), Viacheslav Poliakov (UA), Polina Polikarpova (UA), Julie Poly (UA), Anton Shebetko (UA), Daria Svertilova (UA), Zhenya Trifonova (UA)
Curators: Evita Goze (LV), Yulia Krivich (UA/PL)


Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2023 publication

Editor: Evita Goze (LV)
Design: Līga Spunde (LV)
Texts by: Aiga Dzalbe (LV), Evita Goze (LV), Kateryna Iakovlenko (UA), Ugnė Marija Makauskaitė (LT), Adam Mazur (PL), Tīna Pētersone (LV), Antra Priede (LV), Katarzyna Sagatowska (PL)
Translator: Lauris Veips (LV)
Proofreading and Copyediting: Ilze Jansone (LV), Lauris Veips (LV)
Paper: Galerie Art Silk 130 g/m²
Printing house: Adverts
Publisher: Riga Photography Biennial, www.rpbiennial.com
Cover image: Ieva Baltaduonytė, from the series Uprooted, 2022- Riga, 2023