Translator: Raimonds Jaks Reviewer: Denise RQ
Today I want to talk about small things;
a key ring, for instance.
You see? I am very talented in losing key rings.
But my father - he is a practical man.
Whenever he gets my keys either from the flat or from my car,
if he would return them,
he would also return them with the key rings.
And I didn't pay much attention to that fact until recently
when I got this one.
It is handmade out of an antler,
and there are engraved letters that say Honda.
You see, my father is a practical man.
He doesn't talk about feelings.
And this,
this is how he says, "I love you."
Today I want to talk about small things;
small things that matter.
Another small, yet, a very big thing happened to me
when my son Lucas was born.
He was really tiny,
but he pushed me to think about big things;
family, for instance.
Where am I coming from?
Is there some connection between place and personality?
Could I discover something new about myself
knowing the place where both of my parents are coming from?
And both of my parents actually come from the Eastern part of Latvia called Latgale.
It is a very remote rural area
with its own traditions and language.
I actually spent most of my childhood summers there.
And that's why I wanted to go there.
Luckily, in 2011, I met my aunt Anna.
I knew that she was living in the same village
- where my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother were born -
called Bilcene.
You see, Bilcene is so small
that most of you wouldn't call it a village.
It is so small you could drive through it in less than one minute.
It is so small you wouldn't be able to find it on Google Maps.
And most probably, it will disappear within the next couple of years
although it has two shops and a church.
So, there I was, as a photographer, in this village,
a very small village.
I have seen photographs from this place,
heard a lot of stories from my grandmother
so I had this visual idea of an idyllic place.
But instead, it seems that nothing really happened there.
There were no people on the roads -
nothing.
Do you know what happens with a photographer
when there are no people on the roads?
It's simple: there are no photographs.
But I still wanted to know more
about this village and the people who are living there,
but you can't just simply walk to a stranger and say,
"Hello! May I take your picture?"
It doesn't work like this. You need some sort of key.
I knew that in this village there used to be a house of my grandmother.
The house...
...the house actually burned down more than 40 years ago.
But it was perfect to start a conversation.
So I knocked to the doors of these strangers saying,
"Hello! My name is Iveta, and I'm a granddaughter of Antoņina.
Could you please help me to find the place
where the house of my grandmother used to be?"
And, of course, they did.
So, the house served as a key to open the doors.
When the doors were open, I could start to photograph people.
First time...
The first time, it would be maybe five minutes.
When I would return the next time, it would be already 15 minutes.
And luckily, maybe in a year,
I would manage to photograph half an hour.
So I did this for three years.
And by photographing those people, I actually got to know them better.
To be honest, I started to recognize something familiar in those people.
I could see my mother, my grandmother,
the way they talk or even think.
Actually, I could recognize myself in those people.
And I realized that this is the place where I do belong,
and the reason why maybe I am a bit strange;
because of those people - they are strange, as well.
Another thing that really surprised me was that these people
were really attached to the land and the houses they were living in.
Most of those people were actually born in the same house
so every corner of these houses were filled with memories.
It almost felt like these houses are alive.
And there is a difference between a dead house and an alive one.
For instance, dead houses don't smell
unless something unpleasant is living there.
Once I asked my aunt Anna why she struggles there;
there was no electricity back then,
no water, not even a proper road.
She looked at me really angry and said,
"I have everything here.
Do you see that tree in front of the house?
During the wartime, my father buried a flag under that tree.
So every time we looked at this tree, we saw a flagpole.
The tree became a symbol for Latvian independence.
That's what the memories are for.
Wherever I look around, I see my beloved ones.
I see how I was raised here,
and how I raised my kids later on in the same house.
I never feel alone in this house."
Unfortunately, I don't have such a house.
If I think about myself, it's ridiculous.
I have changed flats maybe five times within the last two years.
The concept of attachment to some sort of physical house or land
seems quite abstract for me.
To be honest, I have lost this feeling of being at home or feeling at home.
There is no place I could feel at home anymore.
But I have a very strong attachment
to the house and the land of my childhood memories.
And it has nothing to do with the actual object as it is right now.
As a matter of fact, last year
I managed to find that house from my childhood.
It was abandoned, empty, forgotten.
It was locked, but I managed to find one open window.
And I used that window as a door to my own past.
When I entered the house,
there was this coffee table set with jam trays and cups.
It almost felt that the house was waiting for somebody.
Then I looked around, and I really could see
the same chair I was sleeping in as a kid.
When I climbed to the attic,
I could almost smell the flowers that we used to pick up as kids.
And there was even this room
that belonged to our on-armed uncle;
we believed that he is hiding his arm underneath that bed.
I always believed that the attic
is the place where the subconscious of the house can be found.
But last year, when I was standing there,
there was no mystery left;
no mystery at all.
And then I realized that every time I was thinking about that house,
I actually was reinventing it in my own memories.
This house doesn't exist, of course.
And it's impossible to return to your own past.
But I am lucky; I still try to search it in the smell of a hay stack,
lonely swims in a forest,
or just on the face of an old priest.
Latgale is a metaphor of all things I lost.
Whenever I go there I witness the death of the place it used to be.
And I think that most of you have those nostalgic feelings
towards the house of your childhood.
It is something that we have lost,
but we always aim to return there somehow.
Nostalgia exists only where the disappearance is.
And that's why all those Latgalian houses,
for me, are very nostalgic
when I think about myself, my photography,
what I'm trying to do with this,
why I have this unexplainable urge to pick up the camera and photograph.
By going to those remote villages,
I'm not only trying to understand the past history of my family
but also to grasp a small glimpse of my childhood,
my paradise lost.
I believe there are different ways
to connect with our concept of home.
Last year I met a man from Texas.
His parents emigrated during the wartime,
and we had a wonderful conversation about Latgale,
why it's so important for us,
and by the end of this conversation he took me to his hotel room
to show me
a quite huge pile of old bricks.
I was looking at those bricks
and couldn't understand what he was going to do with those.
And he said, "The last time when I was visiting Latgale,
I went to the place where the house of my parents was.
The house doesn't exist anymore,
but we managed to find those bricks in the field nearby.
I am going to take those bricks on the plane with me to Texas."
Imagine, they are just dirty bricks.
But these bricks, for this man, served as a connection with his mother
who was so attached to the land where she was born.
I believe that all those small things really do matter
because they help us to connect with our past,
our beloved ones,
and most importantly,
they help us to connect with ourselves.
I hope that for those of you who have looked at these photographs today,
they seemed maybe familiar,
something to remember, something to connect with.
Photography, for me, is a perfect medium to recreate
this visual feeling of my childhood memories.
This is Latgale; how I remember it in my heart,
but still,
it's real
and it's documentary.
And we all know that photography,
is used so many times as a proof of something's existence.
So, all those people I met
created new memories for me.
They are going to be alive as long as I will remember them.
As for myself,
I don't dream about other places anymore.
I don't long to return
to my own childhood or to my own past
because this is the place I can always return to:
in the village where my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother
were born;
In Bilcene.
Thank you.
(Applause)