Kaspars Goba

Photos by journalist, photographer, filmmaker, and artist Kaspars Goba are usually a part and result of some broader project—film, travel, or research in a particular environment or life. His photo series and films show how communities—often of geographically, historically, or socially marginalized people—are bound to and affected by their location, revealing how history and the present can be told from their perspective. In the photo series Roma in Kurzeme Goba captured the everyday life of the gypsy community that has lived in the Kurzeme region of Latvia since the 15th century, withstanding prejudice and repression during the Russian Empire and National Socialism. In the film and photo series Seda. People of the Marsh (2004), which received a great deal of recognition in Latvia and abroad, Goba compassionately documented life in Seda—a relict settlement of the former Soviet peat mining industry in the middle of a bog. With its multiethnic former immigrant community, the isolated village not only appeared geographically lost but also represented the period of very recent history as well as its protagonists, who are willingly forgotten by the reestablished independent state. His recently published book of photographs, Icelanders: Between Glaciers and Lava, surveys mundane and extraordinary habits of the inhabitants of the astoundingly beautiful and under populated country.

Kaspars Goba often mentions his biologist education in reference to his neutral and scientific approach to his work, comparing it to research on ecosystems. This is reminiscent of the marriage of social and biological visions throughout twentieth century science, in which both fields addressed conditions such as growth, self-organization, adaptability, rejection, integration, environment, closed systems, and the like.

The film, research, and photo series homo@lv brings Kaspars Goba very close to the field of current politics. Work on the film commenced with events surrounding the Gay Pride parade in Riga, Latvia between 2005 and 2006. Despite initial resistance by Riga’s city council, the Pride took place in 2005; however, less than one hundred participants faced insults and accusations by the much larger mixed crowd of neoconservatives, extremist organizations, and representatives of various Christian communities. In July of 2006, when the film research was already underway, the City Council banned the Pride “for national security reasons.” The issue of sexual minorities, as is common in minority versus dominant normality cases, became another pre-election manipulation ground for the neoconservative party agendas. It culminated in violent assaults and attacks on the participants of the Pride rally and press conference. In his interviews Kaspars Goba states that he tries to maintain neutrality in his work and strives to reflect the positions of all parties involved. However, one can assume that the focus on and representation of the individual freedom—including freedom of expression—is in no way a neutral project in young democracy, which is still struggling with the ghosts of xenophobia, intolerance, and exclusion in its massive political cupboards.

Mara Traumane