SELF PUBLISH RIGA 2017
11 – 14 May, opening week of Riga Photomonth 2017
K. K. fon Stricka villa, Aristida Briāna 9

An installation The Last of The Lucky/ You Can't Always Get What You Want by Swedish artists Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt; an extensive exhibition featuring several photobook collections, including Facts and Clarifications and Latvian photobooks and photobook dummies curated by Evita Goze (ISSP, Latvia), books from the Balkans curated by Marina Paulenka (Organ Vida, Croatia), a collection of books by Sputnik Photos (Poland) and works by Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt (B-B-B-Books, Sweden).

11 MAY 19.00 - OPENING OF SELF PUBLISH RIGA

13 MAY - PRESENTATIONS & ARTIST TALKS

13.00 Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt (Sweden), "Photography as a practice to re-imagine the world"
Källström and Fäldt work in the field of photography, text, installation, and publishing. Their work focuses on the production of knowledge, exploring media issues, historical narratives, and the depiction and perception of political events. Over the years, Källström and Fäldt have produced a number of works relating to places undergoing paradigmatic changes; they seek to activate historical layers and notions of uncertainty and chance in order to draw attention to the gap between what is visible and what is told.
 

14.00 Donald Weber (Canada), "War Sand"
Weber will take you through a four year long journey of his latest book "War Sand". It all began from a simple story his grandfather told him when he was a boy; a story about British frogmen coming up from the sea at midnight to scoop beach samples from the Normandy coast. All very hush-hush, it was a secret investigation that was a prelude to the invasion. Weber decided to continue this story and collect his own sand samples to analyze. The talk will explore the ideas Weber pursued, what went wrong, what went right, and how he made it to the final, finished book. An in-depth presentation on the nature of ideas, inspiration, getting things and making mistakes.
 

15.00 Agnieszka Rayss (Sputnik Photos, Poland), "Working on photobooks in a collective and individually"
Sputnik Photos is an international collective founded in 2006 by documentary photographers from Central and Eastern Europe. They are united by a desire to observe and describe what surrounds us, as well as by the common experience of living in Central and Eastern Europe in the post-transformation period. Photographic books, on which they work with journalists and writers, are an important part of their work. They believe that this form of presentation fully conveys the concentration and engagement with which a photographer approaches a long-term project.
 

16.00 - 17.00 break
 

17.00 Peter Puklus (Hungary), "From the Handbook to the Warrior" 
In 2012 Puklus published his first photobook "Handbook to the Stars" which was sold out in no time. The publication was the result of a three-month residency at the Slovakian St a nica Contemporary, Banská Štiavnicá. Viewed in retrospect, "Handbook" is an exercise, a sketchbook, a prelude to the larger projects to which he recently ventured, such as the monumental "The Epic Love Story of a Warrior" (Self Publish Be Happy, London, 2016). "Warrior" also received international attention and made it to the final list of Aperture / Paris Photo Photobook Award 2016. In this presentation Puklus will talk about his personal experience and the practical aspects of making, publishing, distributing photobooks.
 

18.00 Tom Mrazauskas (Brave Books, Lithuania/Germany) in conversation via Skype with photographer Michal Iwanowski (UK), "Clear of People" 
Michal Iwanowski’s grandfather Tolek, and great uncle Wiktor, escaped from soviet captivity and crossed over 2000 kilometres on their fugitive journey home in 1945. 70 years later, Iwanowski followed his grandfather’s footsteps and retraced the original journey. But what had started as a quiet tribute soon turned into a meditation on the strength of the human spirit. How do you carry on when your body gives up? What hope drives you blindly forward when your life is so obviously disposable? In his project Iwanowski reveals a landscape crowded with ghosts, on their fugitive way home. East. West. North. South. There is no room in history books to fit all those people, but they find their place in Iwanowski’s.
 

19.00 Marina Paulenka (Organ Vida, Croatia), "Photobooks from the Balkans: First steps?"
Organ Vida is a leading Croatian institution for promoting and researching contemporary photography practices in Croatia and on the international scene since its foundation in 2008. It is a volunteer led non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting internationally contemporary photography, emerging and established photographers, and to creating platforms for knowledge exchange, education and for showcasing works of young contemporary photographers.