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Inta Ruka at Baukunst
Art in America, Sept, 2003 by Matthias Harder
Inta Ruka, a Latvian photographer, has been taking black-and-white photographic portraits of her countrymen in the rural region of Balvi, on the Russian border, for more than two decades. She has followed the lives of some families with her camera for many years. Thus the childhood, youth and maturity of someone like Iveta Tavare exemplify the modest life of an entire people.
"My Country People" comprises a comprehensive series of images--a distinctive portrait of society, comparable in its systematic approach to such German and American forerunners as August Sander, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Ruka's analytical studies of the emerging country of Latvia are the legacy, at least in terms of content, of Lange's documentation of the economic hardship suffered by American farmers in the Great Depression.
Ruka documents the changes in small village communities in the 1980s and '90s, capturing atmosphere and nitty-gritty realities. In this series, the person is photographed as a type, yet is depicted in the most intimate and natural manner possible. Ruka has become friends with her subjects and visits Balvi regularly from her home base in Riga. She shows her subjects in their homes and apartments or outdoors in an apparently untouched landscape. The subdued mood is comparable to the photographs of her Finnish colleague Esko Mannikko.
Like Mannikko, she uses only available light. The interiors an consciously composed and sometimes have the quality of old-master paintings. People sit or stand, usually motionless and look directly into the camera. An intense communication is palpable.
The Cologne exhibition also included newer portraits. "People I happened to meet" reveals the transformation of a society, the Westernization of a future member of the EU. Young people in the Latvian capital are already internationalized; only license plates and architecture give a hint of the locale.
Ruka's close-up portraits reveal her to be a sensitive observer and a subtle storyteller. The portraits become comedies romances or mysteries in the eyes of a viewer with a good imagination.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
