Arnis Balčus

Arnis Balčus is a photographer and photography critic as well as editor-in-chief of the internet magazine “Fotokvartāls” and the head of the annual festival “Fotomēnesis.” In his work, Balčus is both a strictly conceptual artist who floods his art photography with the expressiveness of current media imagery, as well as a punk fighting for creative freedom with the weapons of visual epatage, defending the position “I will always be against.” Balčus’ works often provoke the viewer with their “untamed” aesthetic, deliberately ignoring the rules of shot composition and lighting, in order to achieve seemingly unwanted fixation effects.  While conflicts, dramas and anecdotes are left outside the physical boundaries of the artwork, they still remain in the viewer’s imagination. 

The series “Es, draugi, mīļākie un citi” was created 20 years ago. It focuses on revealing the everyday and intimate lives of young people, which are usually hidden from society’s view. Young people without special characteristics peer out of the images. Some of them pose, while others simply let themselves be photographed. Their surrounding environment is equally ordinary and neutral, neither particularly refined nor dilapidated. The de-aestheticized images capture or stage moments and mishaps from various lives, in which the main accent is placed on a new type of person. The personages in Balčus’ photographs are paradoxical. These androgynous beings are fragile yet self-assured, shy yet confronting, honest and extremely open but at the same time inscrutable, as they constantly change their image in the search for identity. If trust develops between the photographer and his models during the photo sessions, this is because Balčus is brave enough to place himself in any “other” role at any time.

25 photographs from the series “Myself, Friends, Lovers and Others“. 1998–2004.