Alnis Stakle

Not Even Something During Soviet time (till 1990) the territory of the Soviet city was usually divided into districts and as often as not these districts differ not only with different names but also different functions in the city environment. For example industrial factory districts, garage districts, residential districts, allotments etc. After the fall of Soviet Union many of these districts lost their function. For instance factories were closed, fences were partly dismantled, everything grew over with bushes and people started to use these factory territories as shortcuts to get to certain destinations in the city. Surely there is public transportation in the city that connects city districts, but in the evening and at night it is easier to pass through these territories on foot. Thus new pathways and roads appeared though they are not on the official map of the city. In its turn some areas appeared on the map of the city, which are never the destination for residents’ journeys, but are always an intermediate section between the important parts of the city. In this series’ works I explored these “ghost areas” at night, which stereotypically is the most dangerous time to stay there. Pedestrian beaten tracks as often as not defined the aesthetical basic principles of the structure of work. On occasions there was so little light at the moment of photographing that I had to literally feel my way around. Yet the photographs produce an effect of being taken at daytime. Before I started photographing, I had imagined the pictures would bear at least the slightest traces of the menacing and inhospitable essence of interstice. Yet I discovered that in the photographs the interstice cityscapes acquire the qualities characteristic for the romanticist tradition in landscape painting.