During the occupation of Latvia and its forced assimilation into the Soviet Union (1940–1990), only photojournalism was recognized as a professional endeavor, as it was compelled to adhere to regulations and reflect reality in accordance to Soviet ideology. However, a culture of photo clubs flourished among amateurs, providing opportunities for education, criticism, and advice, as well as competitions and exhibitions. Photography was easily accessible, and clubs were founded all over the country. It should be noted, however, that while it was referred to as photographic art in the public domain, it was neither considered professional photography nor professional art in the official hierarchy. (1) In the 1960s, it became possible for club members to send their work abroad and participate in international exhibitions.  The aesthetics of the photo clubs are characterized, for example, by the use of various decorative means of visual expression, montage, solarization, isohelia etc., as well as a strong degree of salonism.

The largest and most influential was the Photo Club Riga, founded in 1962, while one of its most prominent members was Gunārs Binde (1933). The works of Gunārs Binde and the other photographers of Riga’s photo club were imbued with a romantic atmosphere, which transposed the representation of reality from the mundane to the philosophical. (2) In 1965, Binde received a gold medal at an international exhibition in Argentina, the first such high achievement for both him and the club. Binde is known as a master of nude photography. He focuses on staging his photographs, seeking the greatest value a created image can possess: 'Photography is the reflection of an intellectual field, where one can be enriched by what art gives rather than by information.' (3) Binde’s series 'The Girl with the Cross' (1963–2013), a collaboration with model Sarmīte Sīle, has achieved iconic status. At first, the cross around her neck – a symbol the Soviets disliked – caused some confusion. However, they both decided to leave it on (although a version without the cross had also been publicly presented), naturally opting for a posture of prayer. After 10 years, the photographer and the model met and continued the series, creating a tradition to repeat the same photograph every 10 years for as long as they were both alive. In the last photograph, Sīle holds the first photograph of the series in front of her mature, aging body.

In 1964, Binde began teaching photography at the Riga Secondary School of Applied Arts, where one of his students was Zenta Dzividzinska (1944–2011). She was also active in the Camera Club Riga in the 1960s and 1970s. Among her best-known series are the 'Riga Pantomime' (1964–1966) and the 'House Near the River' (1964–2010). In them, Dzividzinska documents her everyday life and that of her loved ones in their native homes. Her photography was unique in many ways, even as compared to the usual aesthetics of photography clubs. First, she abandoned technical precision and focus in favor of blurring her image and experimenting with light, double exposures, and montages. Second, it was common in the art of the time to see women and the naked female body from the perspective of the heterosexual male gaze (4) – Dzividzinska offered a very direct, candid, intimate view of women, often photographing herself as well. However, 'there was no institutional framework or intellectual context in which a young woman from Riga could exhibit such images and expect to be understood. Dzividzinska continued working for a decade, perhaps fueled by her own excitement about the possibilities of the photographic medium to capture and defamiliarize reality,' (5) writes Alise Tīfentāle, her daughter and a photography historian. Today, Dzividzinska’s archive has become a rich and versatile object of research.

Along with Dzividzinska, another woman of the few that frequented the Photo Club Riga was Māra Brašmane (1944). For most of her life, she took photographs and 'collected her work in a box,' calmly acknowledging that her style fell outside the limits of what was accepted at the time. Her style never strayed far from the documentary, as she was interested in the urban scenes of Riga, the markets, and the people she met there. She was also present in the bohemian scene of the 1960s and 1970s, portraying artists and events. The value of this photographic archive was only realized in 2002, when Brašmane opened her exhibition 'The City of My Youth.' 'Brašmane saw reality differently from both the official, deceitful state propaganda and the over-aestheticized art of photography – in line with this, she quite consciously created an individual, if initially unpopular, expression,' (6) art critic Vilnis Vējš has described. Both Brašmane and Dzividzinska, and later other photographers, began making series of photographs, which was another deviation from the principles usually observed in photo clubs, in particular that a single photograph was an independent work of art. This singular work was replaced by a representation of a perceived world across a series of works.

The main teacher and authority for Andrejs Grants (1955) was Egons Spuris (1931–1990), the pioneer of subjective documentary photography in Latvia. In the 1980s, Grants continued in this direction and formed an informal group of artists called 'A.' The core of the group consisted of Inta Ruka, Valts Kleins, Mārtiņš Zelmenis, Gvido Kajons, and Andrejs Grants. These like-minded photographers were also called the 'new wave' of Latvian photography. 'The approach of the ‘new wave’ was based on documentary photography, aligning its alleged truthfulness with overall glasnost rhetoric of openness and directness. The documentary imagery was clearly positioned against the established pictorial aesthetics of camera clubs,' (7) says Tīfentāle. Zelmenis recalls that Grants referred to himself as an author, unlike the many people who did salon photography and called themselves photo artists. In his view, Grants did so to distance himself from them. (8) Grants is an observer who denies any staging and always 'waits' for his shots. His images have a balanced sense of calm, a completely neutral yet immersive view of the world around him – described by art historian Laima Slava as 'the sacredness of the moment, a kind of vertical draught of light, which can sometimes also darken ominously.' (9) One may also agree with Kārlis Vērpe’s observation (10) on the presence of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 'decisive moment' and the relevance of Roland Barthes’ concepts of 'studium' and 'punctum' in Grants’s own definition of the three layers or pyramid of photography. At its base is the informative or documentary layer, then the metaphorical or symbolic, and at its apex, ideally, the ineffable, suggestive level.

Photography historian Pamela M. Browne offers a view of Grants’s photography through the prism of magical realism. His visual language is characterized by capturing two (or more) images in a single photograph, between which relationships and multiple meanings emerge – 'the objects have only one purpose, to emphasize the meaning between... behind and above them.' (11) This relationship between the objects also leads to a reflection on the timeless, on the level of the idea. A prime example of this are the photographs 'Jūrmala. Bulduri. 1987'  or 'Museum. Bauska. 1986' both from the series 'Around Latvia.' These real-life elements, combined in a certain way, create a series of associations that are open to interpretation. However, this is a specific period in Latvian history – from 1984 to the mid-1990s – when the shackles of the USSR fell slowly but surely, and Latvia eventually became a free and independent country. To quote Laima Slava, 'a time has irreversibly passed, which involves radical changes in everything […]. But the main thing remains unchanged – the human desire to move, to rejoice, to contemplate, to acquire, to enjoy, and therefore to live.' (12)

Gvido Kajons (1955) also documented everyday scenes of Soviet Latvia in the 20th century. However, his manner was quite different, as his prevailing focus is on urban photography, saturated with the signs of the times and a very subtle ironic outlook. 'The time was so ridiculous that you couldn’t help but notice it. Curiosities and paradoxes were on every corner,' (13) says Kajons himself. Even if the observer of the photographs is not familiar with Soviet iconography or the precise historical moment, Kajons makes visible the alienation of the people from their environment, the contrast between the official representation of power (slogans, posters, urban portraits, etc.) and the shabby world they created. (14) Although the people in Kajons’ photographs are elements of the urban environment, few photographers have succeeded in depicting how people actually felt inside. And then came the Baltic Way action on August 23, 1989 – a peak representation of the power of human togetherness. One of the many who documented these events on Latvian territory was the seasoned press photographer Aivars Liepiņš (1953). He was one of the few who, by chance, had the opportunity to capture the events in a helicopter. He recalls: 'A haze was rising like a long line between the fir trees and the hills. Everything was moving right up to the bottom. It felt unreal. The earth seemed to breathe – like a huge, sleeping animal. And across this land – a frozen ant path. Later I understood why it felt so unreal. Usually it’s the other way around – it’s the road that moves, while the ground is still.' (15)

Although humanist photography is not a frequently used term in the history of Latvian photography, it accurately describes the impulse that pervades the development of photography from the 1960s to the 1990s. It is the pursuit of freedom both in the formal means of expression in photography and in its message. Moreover, this process took place at a time when the country had regained its independence. The photographs of Binde, Dzividzinska, Brašmane, Grants, Kajons, and Liepiņš continue to divert our gaze to the small, daily moments of human activity amidst the greater course of life.

1. Tīfentāle, Alise (2011). Fotogrāfija kā māksla Latvijā. 1960–1969. Rīga: Neputns, p. 27

2. Stigneev, V. (2004). 'The Force of the Medium. The Soviet Amateur Photography Movement.' Beyond Memory. Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo­Related Works of Art. Ed. Diane Neumaier. t. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum and Rutgers University Press, 2004, p. 70

3. Gailītis, Viestarts (2014). Intervija: Gunāra Bindes ego. Arterritory. Digital access : https ://arterritory.com/lv/vizuala_maksla/intervijas/9396-intervija_gunara_bindes_ego/

4. Garth, Maria (2022). 'Soviet Avant-Gardes and Socialist Realism: Women Photographers Bridging the Divide, 1930s–1960s.' Journal of Avant-Garde Studies. No. 1(2), 188–220.

5. Tīfentāle, Alise (2021). Entering the Elusive Estate of Photographer Zenta Dzividzinska. MoMA Post, March 24. See: https://post.moma.org/entering-the-elusive-estate-of-photographer-zenta-dzividzinska/ 

6. Vējš, Vilnis (2014). Māra Brašmane. Fotografēt kā elpot. Kultūras Diena. Digital access: https://www.diena.lv/raksts/kd/maksla/mara-brasmane.-fotografet-ka-elpot-14042748?picidx=1

7. Tīfentāle, Alise (2011). 'The New Wave of Photography: The Role of Documentary Photography in Latvian Art Scene During the Glasnost Era.' Visual and Performing Arts. Ed. Stephen Andrew Arbury, Aikaterini Georgoulia. Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research, p. 123

8.  Browne, Pamela M. (2013). 'Contesting Legitimacy: From the Photo Club to Fine Art Subjective Documentary — Andrejs Grants. Latvia: Changing and Unchanging Reality.' State Construction and Art in East Central Europe, 1918–2018. Ed. Agnieszka Chmielewska, Irena Kossowska, Marcin Lachowski. New York: Routledge, p. 107

9. Grants, Andrejs, Slava, Laima (2002). Andrejs Grants. Fotogrāfijas. Rīga: Neputns 

10. Grants, Andrejs, Slava, Laima (2018). Andrejs Grants. Fotoalbums. Rīga: Neputns, p. 11

11. Browne, Pamela M. (2013). 'Contesting Legitimacy: From the Photo Club to Fine Art Subjective Documentary — Andrejs Grants. Latvia: Changing and Unchanging Reality.' State Construction and Art in East Central Europe, 1918–2018. Ed. Agnieszka Chmielewska, Irena Kossowska, Marcin Lachowski. New York: Routledge, p. 114

12. Grants, Andrejs, Slava, Laima (2002). Andrejs Grants. Fotogrāfijas. Rīga: Neputns

13. Balčus, Arnis (2013). Intervija ar Gvido Kajonu. Foto Kvartāls. Digital version: https://fotokvartals.lv/2013/10/15/intervija-ar-gvido-kajonu/

14. Allen Svede, Mark (2004). 'On the Verge of Snapping Latvian Nonconformist Artists and Photography.' Beyond Memory. Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo­Related Works of Art. Ed. Diane Neumaier. t. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum and Rutgers University Press, 2004, p. 243

15. Rozenberga, Māra (2019). Helikopters pēdējā brīdī. Kā tapa Aivara Liepiņa ikoniskās Baltijas ceļa fotogrāfijas. LSM. Digital version: https://www.lsm.lv/raksts/kultura/kino-foto-un-tv/helikopters-pedeja-bridi-ka-tapa-aivara-liepina-ikoniskas-baltijas-cela-fotografijas.a329362/