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[Ex] Pride by Alnis Stakle
Before I started to work with this essay of photographs, I thought for a long while what we - as humans are truly proud of. How does pride affect us? Is that what we are proud of worth it? Mostly, we are proud of our national identity, religious beliefs, wealth, achievements in science and economics, etc. And more often than not, we are ready to die for it.
I don't want to emphasise pride as a positive or negative quality. I want to highlight that this quality - to be proud of - as well as many other qualities are those that characterize us as humans. The history of humankind is replete with passions, tragedies, pain, and delight which we created because we were proud of our superiority. I don't want to assert that pride is a quality that destroys us or characterizes our inner emptiness. People have to answer this question for themselves.
For the implementation of my essay of photographs I decided to take a look at recent history when Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union. I decided to explore what was going on with the factories that were built during Soviet times. Industry in Soviet times was one of supreme pride and one of the supporting points of Soviet ideology. After the nineties, when the Soviet Union collapsed, for the most part, factories underwent difficult economical crises for various reasons. Raw materials of goods and prime costs of energy rapidly increased, though society's purchasing ability remained the same. The quality of manufactured products also dropped behind that of imported goods from western countries. Even now, nearly 14 years later, half of the old factories that were owned by corporations have been sold to small firms and are used as warehouses, or simply remain empty and vandalized.
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The theme 'Pride' in my essay of photographs is interpreted as [Ex] Pride, because it takes a look at the interiors of factories which carry a subjective visual research about former pride. As the essence in my photographs, I have used the inner environment of these factories that even now do not seem to be lifeless. The environments feel as if they teem with their own inner quiet life...the noise of dropping water, wind in the broken windows, old posters and documents, books from the Soviet times, personal belongings of workers...I didn't look for anything specific. I put my focus more on the symbolic and broadly interpreted things and compositions that would be possible to understand on multiple levels with a wide comprehension.
In my childhood, I remember times when sirens in the mornings and evenings announced the beginning and end of a working day, and I remember times when suddenly closed territories of factories became approachable to anybody. A great part of my youth passed in these forsaken places and it was one of the main motives behind why I chose this exact visual interpretation for the concept of 'Pride'. Nowadays people who come here are very different. They are children and teenagers who come here to play, or have fun vandalizing. There are also people who try to find something useful to sell or for the household. I never tried to purposefully take pictures of people as personalities, though I met many of them while I wandered and only photographed them as impersonal shadows that might be more relevant to the exposure of fallen riches, rather than as human beings.
Every exploration has questions that it tries to clarify. It is up to the viewers to decide how successful I was in interpreting the concept of 'Pride'. I am just sure that this project has helped me get rid of some of my shadows.
The photographs were taken in June and July of 2004 in three cities throughout Latvia: Daugavpils, Riga, and Livani. These cities have been the most influential in terms of the industry in Latvia. The production in some of the factories (e.g. Livani Biochemical Factory, Livani Glass Factory, Riga Weapon Factory "Arsenal") were popular in all of the Soviet Union.
For more work by Alnis Stakle, please visit The Artist Showcase.
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