Heritage Lens
European Cooperation Project on cultural heritage and climate change
Partner organisations: ISSP Riga, Cobertura Photo, Officine Fotografiche Rome and Fotofestiwal Lodz
Visual reserach: Katrīna Marta Riņķe
European Cooperation Project on cultural heritage and climate change
Partner organisations: ISSP Riga, Cobertura Photo, Officine Fotografiche Rome and Fotofestiwal Lodz
Visual reserach: Katrīna Marta Riņķe
Near the lake, I met a lawyer who had recently bought a chateau next to the Meirāni channel, a recently finished diversion channel which drains the largest lake in Latvia. This project is part of a heavily engineered wetland management network operating within a hydrotechnical system. The solution disrupts the rivers Teicija, Malmuta, and Lisiņa to safely divert water into the Aiviekste river.
The manors are priced equivalent to the furnishing costs of a three-story family home. A few months back, for the price of furniture, the lawyer bought her second manor. It used to be a dream to become a duchess. We talked while driving to the lake: “I worked as a schoolteacher for a brief while. The other teachers teach kids how to lie, and the kids lie to the teachers, and I got tired of it.” Up north near Ērgļi, manors do not belong to the locals anymore; they have been bought up by a single wealthy Russian merchant.
While returning to the largest lake of Latvia, Lubāns, through the different seasons of the year, I noticed how fishermen have adapted to temperatures of minus 10 degrees or lower. Water freezes, liquid becomes solid, and 75-meter-long nets are set under the ice, connected through two ice holes with a flag marking the site. Those who continue the tradition remain. The lake takes everything and asks for everything in return.
Photography in its beginnings, in the 18th century, was made for replication, specifically, the high-quality replication of paintings. During winter, the lake is silent and looks like a painting; the soft white snow stretches all along the 15km-wide waterline horizon. During summer, from Google Earth, it looks like a swamp. What happens when the largest lake of a geographical region is deprived of stretching out each spring? And so, the text leads into land grabs and cheap labor, and leans into exploiting authorship - there’s a question here.
I was swimming in a stream nearby and exhaled, “I can’t swim as fast as the Gauja.” A poet-raftsman responded: “No, never say that. You can swim faster than the stream.” And everything has changed since then.