iga Photography Biennial 2020 launches the exhibition ‘If You Forget Me’ at the National Library of Latvia

The Riga Photography Biennial’s 2020 exhibition ‘If You Forget Me’ will be open to visitors from 20 August until 19 September at the National Library of Latvia. Produced in collaboration with the Archeology of Photography Foundation (PL) and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (PL), this collection features works by distinguished Polish artists. The Archeology of Photography Foundation is taking care of photographic archives as well as initiates artistic projects that focus on contemporary photography through the prism of photographic archives. The exhibition is curated by the art critic and historian Adam Mazur (PL).

‘Experiencing the matter: about working with photographic archives’ – a lecture by Marta Przybylo, a member of the Archeology of Photography Foundation – will take place at 17:00 on 10 September at the National Library of Latvia.

Exhibition participants: Photographs from the archive of the Archeology of Photography Foundation (PL) – Janusz Bąkowski, Zofia Chomętowska, Zbigniew Dłubak, Mariusz Hermanowicz, Marek Piasecki, Tadeusz Sumiński, Wojciech Zamecznik, Antoni Zdebiak.

All photographs in the ‘If You Forget Me’ exhibition have been selected from the remarkable archive of the Archeology of Photography Foundation (FAF). Although most of the images were created by eminent Polish artists, these photographs are not yet so well known; some are even partly forgotten. They have very little in common with their authors’ personalities; they do not illustrate events, instead they become an event. The curator’s selection carries poetic overtones and a sense of longing for each image to encounter the eye of a sensitive viewer, facilitate interpretation and elicit a chain of associations. It references the instantaneous and fleeting nature of everyday experience, hence the title ‘If You Forget Me’ from the poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, whose work inspired one of the exhibiting artists, Zbigniew Dłubak.

The Archeology of Photography Foundation was established in 2008 and its aim is to study, process, prepare and preserve the archives of Polish photographers. Currently the Foundation looks after the archives of twelve artists by cataloguing and digitalising their oeuvre and making it available online. The Foundation has its own gallery, conducts research projects, organises exhibitions, workshops and lectures, and also publishes photo books and other books dedicated to the theory and history of photography. Exhibitions based on collections prepared by FAF have been presented in places such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and the Photoespaña Festival in Madrid. Wojciech Zamecznik: Photo-graphics was awarded as the best catalogue by the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award 2016. In 2013, the Foundation was also granted the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Award.

The ‘If You Forget Me’ exhibition and lecture is organised by the Riga Photography Biennial in cooperation with the Archeology of Photography Foundation (PL), the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (PL) and the National Library of Latvia.

Riga Photography Biennial 2020 programme: http://rpbiennial.com/program.html

The Riga Photography Biennial is an international contemporary art event focusing on the analysis of visual culture and artistic representation. The biennial covers issues ranging from cultural theory to current socio-political processes in the Baltics and the wider European region. Using the format of an art festival, the Riga Photography Biennial attempts to record changes taking place all over the world and invites us to collectively interpret them – something we not only need to see but also imagine whilst translating the complicated and oversaturated contemporary visual language into meaningful relationships between our daily reality, the camera lens, historical material, contemporary art, technologies and the future.

‘If You Forget Me’ exhibition partners: State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Adam Mickiewicz Institute (PL), Archeology of Photography Foundation (PL), LG Electronics Latvia, Rixwell Hotel, Printing house ‘ADverts’, Hibnerstudio, Arterritory, LSM, Satori, Newspaper ‘Ir’, Punctum, Literatūra ir menas (LT), Latvijas Radio, Radio NABA.