Promotional Content

This is our logo, poster and advertisements in the city of Riga. The text is bold and is easy to spot and read for any distance. We want to attract as many to our festival, and I think this is intriguing enough to do more reproach and visit the festival. The dates are included which makes it easier for potential visitors to find us. The city will be bust during the whole year with its capital of culture status. So having our festival there will only bring more people. 

Why Riga?

Riga is the gem of the Baltics. It is situated at the mouth of the Daugava, on the shores of the Gulf of Riga on the Baltic. Riga has an ancient history and rich cultural heritage. As Riga has always been located at a juncture of trading routes, it is a multicultural city which means there are things to see here: a weekend in Riga is a great way to gather new impressions and to relax.

The event programme promised by Riga for 2014 will be a pleasant surprise for any person interested. It envisages several hundreds of exciting cultural events, including the pride of place given to amber, which historically linked many nations but in modern Latvia is used in different new ways.      

This year the focus of attention will be placed on the Castle of Light or the new building of the Latvian National Library designed by the world famous Latvian architect Gunars Birkerts. Thus far, for fans of architecture the name of Riga has been associated with the romantic medieval buildings and the marvellous Art Nouveau heritage located on the right bank of the river Daugava but now also the left bank of the river with the new library will become a landmark of the city.

Follow the programme "Riga 2014" and come to visit! Welcome to Riga, its picturesque sister city Sigulda and the whole Latvia!   

Event program

More than 12,000 participants from almost hundred various cultural institutions: national, local and non-governmental have engaged in the cultural capital of Europe event programme preparation.  

Riga's — European capital of culture — event programme features both modern and historical trends which have left significant traces in the society's memory and culture. Fine arts exhibitions and modern art festival "Survival Kit", which in a few years' time has become a much-awaited event in the general public, several performances, festivities, promotions and attractions and, yes, of course, the light festival "Shine on, Riga!" which lightens up our capital in the darkest time of the year. Also, the national  solstice festival with sonorous Ligo songs, frothy beer mugs and oak tree wreaths... and much more to come. 

http://www.latvia.travel/en/article/riga-will-become-european-capital-culture-2014

With the large amounts of visitors to the city this year, Riga was an easy choice for our venue. As our original idea was culture, when researching we found that Riga is the capital of culture for 2014. This brings in a lot more tourism than usual and would mean more visitors and a bigger audience for our artists.

There are currently 74 events planned for Riga during this year, including the exhibition "Amber through the times." The exhibition is also a permanent display at the Natural History Museum of Latvia. This will bring a lot more visitors into the city, and potentially to the ID festival. 

The view around Riga's town square.

Final Images

Contact Sheet

These are the contact sheets from the two shoots I have done for this brief. I had to re shoot some of my images as I found some were out of focus, and some of the models were not looking straight into the camera as I wanted. I found that it was more difficult to get the shot I wanted at first thought. I wanted to get the colours vibrant and clear in the eye. Different lighting set ups were tested and I feel I found what I was aiming for in this shoot. Each eye was so different and had a big variety of colours, I was very happy with the outcome. 

Practitioner - Bruno Metra and Laurence Jeanson

As a curator for the ID festival, one of the practitioners chosen to show in the festival are French photographers Bruno Metra and Laurence Jeanson. They are collectively known as Metra-Jeanson. The particular work chosen is named ID. They cut out facial features from magazine editorials that are heavily done with make up taped them over models' faces to cover parts of their won faces. They then photographed their models, both men and women, wearing these partial masks. They wanted to focus on how they ‘disconnect between the edited faces and actual human features’.  These images show how models in the industry today are made up so dramatically to look perfect and photo shopped to improve their appearance on the front of a magazine. They talk about how they feel we are bombarded by images of others in the media, whom we try to compare ourselves to.

They say how ‘the act of representation seems to have taken over what is real. The edit is what counts most. And so models erase themselves in order to gain another self.’

The series of images in the ID collection are quite disturbing. With the different facial features placed on the models making them look unreal and altered. The idea behind our festival is to show different peoples identities and personalities. This group of work almost masks the models identity, and adds someone else’s. They will work well within the festival as this work shows how others may think they want to be seen, and maybe change their own identities to fit into society. They are portraying the models identities but slightly changing there over all appearance in a very obvious way. They are showing each of the models becoming another person by masking her own image and identity. These images work well with the rest of the practitioners work, as they are also portraits. They are all done in a plain white background that draws all the attention to the model. The models faces have been transformed in a way that takes a hard look at our identity, but they can still be seen behind the paper over laid images. I like this concept and feel it will work well in our festival.

Metra and Jeanson talk about how they believe that; ‘We are fascinated by the power of media to influence people's identities.’

Exhibit Venue

These images show the room we would like to hire out for the festival, both with work and without work in. We feel this room is plenty spacious enough for the 60 images we are going to show. There would be no limits to spacing, wide or high as the ceilings and wall space is endless. 

Riga Art Space is a multifunctional contemporary art space, which in its activity strives not only to the contemporary visual art representation but also to the production of world level art projects by taking relevant and professional organisational measures.

Riga Art Space also offers venues for various activities:

•          Concerts and performances
•          Seminars
•          Meetings
•          Exhibitions
•          Fashion shows

http://www.makslastelpa.lv/en/sections/tour

Andrew Brooks

Andrew Brooks, a photographer from Manchester, uses his images to show us the ‘bigger picture’. He can sometimes spend months and even years re-touching his images to create the perfect moment for the viewer. He wants the viewer to look deeper into the image rather than just what’s first seen. He has expanded into large panoramic scenes of the natural world and largely detailed cityscapes that are captivating. He came in to talk to us about his experiences putting together and festival/exhibition. He talked about the most important things to consider:

• Lighting- The lighting is important to show the work to its full potential. He has previously used tunnel spaces to create and atmosphere. Using enclosed dark spaces, to focus on the images in the light. Also he used direct lighting, creating vibrant images with the use of light boxes and lights with panels to direct the light onto the images. 

• Mounting work- He talked about how he likes his images to have a clean and sharp edged mount. This type of mount suits the city scape images he creates. And finds that a framed mount suits his none city images, such as country landscapes and mountain views. 

• Prints- Brooks prints his images in a range of sizes for different purposes. Large, framed and none framed images for the gallery exhibit. Also the use of small post card style prints for sale to the public to try to earn back some of the money used for the exhibit. These images can be sold as a souvenir from the visit to the gallery. 

• Other things to consider- An online presence allows the work to be seen by a lot more people. He believes that by having an online website, it means there is a permanent exhibition. Social media is a bit part of his work, sites such as twitter, facebook and instagram allow him to show his work as soon as it is ready. This gives more chances for feedback, and means he can be reached a lot easier. 

I very much like Andrew's work, I like both his city images and the more natural and country style images. He works in a way that is very time consuming and feels he must take a day out of his week to get out, and photograph the countryside and its beauty. His technique to create his images means he takes multiples of the same scene in a grid layout. This means he can pick and chose what he wants to create such a vibrant and stunning image. The advice about exhibitions really brought to light some things I wouldn't normally think of, such as print sizes and different lighting techniques. Here are some example of his work; 

"Brooks transforms typical scenes and landscapes into places that look like they could only have been constructed in your dreams." Nicholas Jackson, The Atlantic