Book review: Katrīna Teivāne, "Roberts Johansons. Zeitgeist and Photography"

Alise Tifentale, “The Long Road Up Against the Stream” (Tālais ceļš augšup pret straumi). [Book review of: Katrīna Teivāne. Roberts Johansons. Zeitgeist and Photography (Roberts Johansons. Laikmets un fotogrāfija) Riga: Neputns, 2022.]

Book review published in: Art History and Theory (Mākslas vēsture un teorija) 27 (2023): 87-89.

Download the book review PDF here (Latvian only)!

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to review the latest book by my dear friend Katrīna Teivāne, titled Roberts Johansons. Zeitgeist and Photography (Roberts Johansons. Laikmets un fotogrāfija) (Riga: Neputns, 2022). It is an extremely well-researched and elegantly written monograph about one of the most important photographers in Latvia, Roberts Johansons (1877-1959).

The book is available at the publisher’s website, https://www.neputns.lv/products/laikmets-un-fotografija-roberts-johansons, as well as in the ISSP online store https://shop.issp.lv/products/roberts-johansons-age-and-photography

Short description of the book from the ISSP website:

Roberts Johansons in Katrīna Teivāne's research reveals as one of the most visible Latvian photographers, whose most active period of activity refers to the period from the 20th century until the beginning of the Second World War. Johansons was a member of the Latvian Photographic Society and later also of the Photographic Society, having spent most of his professional life as a salon photographer. In parallel with his daily work, he devoted himself to the creation of artistic images and meticulous documentation of the Latvian environment.

(ISSP website)

The review was commissioned by the main art history journal in Latvia, Mākslas Vēsture un Teorija, and is published in the journal’s vol. 27 (2023).

Find out more about the journal Mākslas Vēsture un Teorija, vol. 27 (2023).

Photos from the book opening at the National Library of Latvia in Riga, May 2022.

Katrīna Teivāne (on the right) and myself at the opening of the book in May 2022.

The following two images are from the Facebook album of the book publisher Neputns (more photos here).

The author of the book, Katrīna Teivāne (left) and myself (right).

I had the honor to congratulate Katrīna and say a few words about the book as well as some of the difficulties and challenges of researching and writing photography histories.

Landscapes for Insiders

Alise Tifentale, “Landscapes for Insiders,” in Sense of Place, ex.cat., Riga: KultKom, 2013, pp. 5-8.

The catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition “A Sense of Place. Contemporary Latvian Photography,” October 17 - November 10, 2013, AusstellungsHalle 1A, Sculstrasse 1A, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Download the article pdf here.

The photographers participating in the exhibition are Arnis Balčus, Reinis Hofmanis, and Alnis Stakle.

The essay is published in the catalogue also in German, “Landschaften, nur für die Einheimischen,” and in Latvian, “Ainavas, kuras redz tikai savējie.”

New View on Latvian Soviet-Era Press Photography

Alise Tifentale, “Jauns skats uz Latvijas padomju laika preses fotogrāfiju” [New View on Latvian Soviet-Era Press Photography], FK Magazine, January 24, 2022.

Read the article now:

—> download a PDF here

—> or read it online on FK Magazine website: https://fotokvartals.lv/2022/01/24/jauns-skats-uz-latvijas-padomju-laika-preses-fotografiju/

The books I reviewed:

1. Dominiks Gedzjuns. 1956-1961, edited by Toms Zariņš and Aleksejs Muraško. Riga: Kultkom, 2021. Selected works by press photographer Dominiks Gedzjuns (1918-1998)

2. Bonifācijs Tiknuss fotografē pirms pusgadsimta [Bonifācijs Tiknuss Takes Photographs Half a Century Ago], edited by Andrejs Tiknuss in collaboration with Ēriks Hānbergs and Voldemārs Hermanis. Riga: Madris, n.d. The story of the life and career of the newspaper Cīņa photojournalist Bonifācijs Tiknuss (1915-1986) as told by his son and former colleagues with a broad selection of his photographs.

Entering the Elusive Estate of Photographer Zenta Dzividzinska

Tifentale, Alise. “Entering the Elusive Estate of Photographer Zenta Dzividzinska.” MoMA Post, March 24, 2021. https://post.moma.org/entering-the-elusive-estate-of-photographer-zenta-dzividzinska/

New article in the Museum of Modern Art’s online research publication Post. Notes on Art in Global Context, listed in sections Central & Eastern Europe and Art and Gender.

UPDATE: in 2024, this article was included in the anthology Central Eastern European & Diasporic Feminisms (London: Cell, 2024). Find out more about this publication here: https://www.alisetifentale.net/research-blog-at/ceed-feminisms-bibliography

Read the article on MoMA Post website: https://post.moma.org/entering-the-elusive-estate-of-photographer-zenta-dzividzinska/ or download the article PDF here: download article pdf

To learn more about the Latvian artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011), please visit the website of her archive and estate, Art Days Forever.

Zenta Dzividzinska. Page from a contact print book. 1965. Latvian National Museum of Art.

Zenta Dzividzinska. Untitled (Self-portrait). From the series House Near the River. 1968.

Abstract:

Art historian Alise Tifentale considers the difficulties of preserving and interpreting the legacy of Latvian artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944–2011). In the 1960s, Dzividzinska was one of the few women photographers in Riga whose work was highly regarded in the local and international photo club culture. Her most significant contribution is a collection of images capturing the daily life of three generations of women living in a small house in the country. These photographs have remained largely unknown until recently. This essay highlights the sociopolitical and cultural motives for such neglect and suggests avenues of further research of the artist’s estate.

This essay introduces the life and career of Zenta Dzividzinska or ZDZ (the artist, annoyed by having to spell out her long, Polish-sounding last name, which was rather unusual in Latvia, liked to sign with this abbreviation), focusing on her artistic output of the 1960s and early 1970s. At the center of this body of work is a vast collection of images that she later titled House Near the River, which were made in and around her parents’ home on the outskirts of Iecava, a village less than an hour’s drive south of Riga. During the 1960s, while studying art in Riga and working, ZDZ often visited her parents and extended family there. Later, she returned to the house to live in it permanently with her husband, whom she married in 1969.

House Near the River comprises hundreds of negatives and prints depicting the daily life of three generations of women as it unfolded in and around their small house in the Latvian countryside. Today these images can be viewed perhaps as para-feminist (to use Amelia Jones’s term) because explicitly feminist critique did not emerge in Latvian art until the 1980s.

Zenta Dzividzinska. Page from a contact print book. 1965. Latvian National Museum of Art.

Zenta Dzividzinska. Page from a contact print book. 1965. Latvian National Museum of Art.

Zenta Dzividzinska. Page from a contact print book. 1966. Latvian National Museum of Art.