Gallery Late – Māra Brašmane solo show "MY FRIENDS", RPB 2026

The exhibition MY FRIENDS at ALMA presented within the Riga Photography Biennial, brings together Māra Brašmane’s earliest photographs, taken between 1965 and 1969 with her father’s large-format Voigtländer camera. The black-and-white images capture a free and relaxed atmosphere among bohemians, artists, and writers—students who would, in the following decades, become part of Riga’s emerging intellectual generation. Laima Eglīte, Eižens Valpēters, Eva Gurviča, Juris Pudāns and others are seen discussing their dreams for the future in cafés such as “Kaza” and “Putnu dārzs”.  

Māra Brašmane sought to document life as it was, seeing Riga through the eyes of a young person, in contrast to the expectations of Soviet ideology. In biographical notes it is often stated that Brašmane began photographing in 1969, when she joined the Riga Photo Club. This is because she never intended these earlier photographs to be exhibited. That is where the strength of these works lies—they were not created with the obligation of a specific project, nor were they meant for outside audiences. Their motivation was neither ambition nor institutional commission. Māra simply photographed what felt important and interesting to her, preserving it as a personal archive of memories—capturing sensations and experiences possible only within that particular time and place.

Māra Brašmane (b. 1944) is one of the most significant Latvian photographers of the 20th century. Throughout her life she has built an extensive archive of black-and-white photography, although wider recognition came only after the exhibition In the City of My Youth in 2002 at the Latvian Artists’ Union Gallery. The exhibition’s photo album (Neputns, 2005) has since become a rare item in libraries. Brašmane’s photographs expanded the concept of documentary photography by combining social observation with a subjective and poetic perspective. Her artistic legacy laid important foundations for the inclusion of documentary photography within the canon of Latvian art history.  

Among Brašmane’s most significant exhibitions are In the City of My Youth (2002, Latvian Artists’ Union Gallery), Museum Workers (2005, Latvian National Museum of Art), RIX – CPH – RIX. A Flight Through Time and Space (2006, Copenhagen City Museum), Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe at MUMOK (curator: Bojana Pejić), A Time of Change (2014, Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, Latvian National Museum of Art), and Looking Back (2021, Latvian Museum of Photography). Brašmane’s work is also presented in the publications In the City of My Youth (2005, texts by Liāna Langa and Juris Zvirgzdiņš, Neputns) and Central Market (2017, text by Alise Tīfentāle, Neputns). In 2015 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the Cross of Recognition. Her works are held in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art, the Latvian Museum of Photography, and the Rundāle Palace Museum.

Exhibition curator: Kristians Fukss

Image: Māra Brašmane, ‘Self-Portrait’, 1965

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About the Riga Photography Biennial‍

The Riga Photography Biennial is an international contemporary art event that focuses on the analysis and artistic representation of visual culture. In the title of the Biennial, photography is used as an umbrella term for a wide variety of artistic practices in image-making that continue to transform the language of contemporary art in the 21st century. The biennial’s themes range from cultural theory to current sociopolitical processes in the Baltic and European regions. The Riga Photography Biennial aims to capture and, in the format of an art festival, offer a shared understanding of the changes taking place in the world—changes that we need not only to see but also to imagine, translating today’s complex and saturated visual language into meaningful relationships—between everyday life, the camera lens, historical material, contemporary art, technology, and the future. How has the understanding of photography and the image changed due to digital technology, and how does it manifest itself within the context of a work of art? For the organizers of the Biennial, these are crucial issues to analyze and represent, offering Latvian audiences the most relevant examples of international art through exhibition displays, as well as introducing the ideas of prominent art theorists through symposia, discussions, and publications within the formats of exhibitions and performances. The first Riga Photography Biennial took place in 2016. The Riga Photography Biennial 2026 runs from April 16 to July 3 with an extensive exhibition and educational program, marking the RFB’s ten-year journey. For more information:
www.rpbiennial.com.