Nowadays it often happens that ordinary life is moved to the centre of contemporary art, and the photos of Latvian artist Inta Ruka is a brilliant representation of the duties and people, whom she meets during her own regular daily works .
Inta lives in Pardaugava, which is a little bit outside of the main part of Riga, but she works in downtown. These short, regular journeys give her an opportunity to get into the close focus of ordinary subjects. She continues traditions of previous generations of Latvian photographers documenting unnoticed features mainly through the portraits. From this point of view there is nothing special in her photos. Still here is one particular thing. Inta has never looked for the particular models. She has no interest in taking images of famous people or high society. As Inta Ruka herself says, everything happens naturally and simply to her depending on circumstances and the trust between people. Some interesting subjects she found in the market. Some of her subjects are homeless people. Inta likes to start her conversations on the street which from the very beginning could be recognised, according to homeless people experience, as a strange interest of another side of society. Anyway, looking at the photos of Inta Ruka we may see very simple, poor people, but always we find them with full of respect. Yes, of course, there are some artists portraits, too, but they are just Intas’s friends and they are not the main part of her photo portrait collection. Still there is one more special thing which might be found in her attitude. It seems to me that as many artists nowadays, Inta also recognises an importance of communication within her subjects. Thus much of her photos can be seen as a fruitful result of even short conversations and communication taken with the subjects beforehand. She always shows the subject without compromising his authenticity. By representing her contemporaries in a such way, she offers a real alternative to the critical attitude and excludes negative opinion of them. As we all say “life is not an easy thing”’- thus let’s find a positive side of “unbearable lightness of being”!
Translated from Polish into English by Marek Stelmaszczyk.
Proof read by Simon Bretherton.
Text originally published in Sybaris 4th Baltic Contemporary Art Biennial, Szczecin, 2001.
Irena Bužinska. Art historian and researcher at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga. Curator of the The People I got to know exhibition.