Reality in the 21st century is challenging: war, globalisation, the climate crisis, and social and technological changes that make us redefine identity and co-existence. The stream of images that envelop us is no longer merely a record – it is a language of communication that shapes our understanding of the world.

As part of the Riga Photography Biennial 2026, the exhibition Side by Side. Three Looks at the Same Place investigates the possibilities of co-existence among different visual languages, bringing them into dialogue and revealing a single reality from three different perspectives. Three artists – a painter, a photographer working with analogue technology, and a photographer working with digital technology – document the same place, each of them employing their own medium, their own rhythm, their own instrument of perception and interpretation.

Analogue photography retains the dimension of touch and time, while digital photography reveals the changeability of the instant and layers of information, and painting embodies a subjective, emotional perspective.

In the exhibition, the viewer is invited to reflect on the ways images – as carriers of knowledge, feeling and experience – are shaped today and how, instead of competing, different visual languages might coexist, enriching an understanding of our common space. This is a conversation about co-existence – between technology and humanity, between reality and interpretation, between image and the viewer.

Participants: Uldis Balga (LV), Dainis Kārklvalks (LV), Katrīna Vīnerte (LV)
Curator and text author: Uldis Jaunzems-Pētersons

Image: Uldis Balga, from the series 'Talsi in Silver', silver gelatine print, 2025