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| Kaspars Goba Ieva Puķe | |
| Journalists interviewing Kaspars Goba - one of their fellows, after all - have striven, even in the titles of their publications, to skirt around the artistic qualities of his work, in order to reach the core that, in their view, is concealed in his personality. Thus, we have "Stories for a maniacal person" (Diena, 13 December 2004), "Where Goba is most often" (Ieva, 9 June 2004) and "Rules of the game for photographer Goba" (Diena, 16 February 1999)...
The last piece is one of my own. I recall that Goba arrived for the interview longhaired and rebellious. We weren't really acquainted. But I'd read his articles in the magazine Rīgas Laiks: reports from a slaughterhouse and from the Tallinn rubbish dump, interviews with Kārlis Pētersons, convicted of paedophilia, and with a child of nature living by the beach at Saulkrasti ... I'd seen the exhibition of Goba's photos of Iceland "Summer in the Land of Ice", and shortly before this trip, through a mutual acquaintance, he'd asked for the address of someone else I'd interviewed - an Icelandic musician who'd visited Latvia. We were similar conversation partners, since we were both interested in travel, strange places and people, and had already accomplished something in journalism, but I could envy him. Goba was a photographer also capable of writing professionally, while I was a journalist whose amateur pictures I hadn't dared offer the media.
I could also envy him as a personality. Few people, it seems, are capable of such spontaneity in travelling, getting to know people, crossing distances and cultural barriers. Then, suddenly, a lyrical note appeared in his stories. The biology studies he'd recently taken up allowed him to perceive in the frame not only people and houses, but also the minor elements in nature: a lichen, a flower. To appreciate that everything around us is alive. That a tree is not just a figure, a form, but a whole small world in itself. In a daily paper, photographers and journalists are generally not very tolerant towards one another. Everyone aims to show their own work, without following how others will tackle it. Working on joint publications with Kaspars Goba for the magazine Rīgas Laiks and the paper Diena, I came to understand that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. That a photographer can give enough of his time for you both to be truly satisfied with the result of such collaboration. That the photographer can even suggest to the journalist (and vice versa) the directions in which to proceed, so that you end up with the feeling that you've achieved the maximum possible. Once you see how selflessly Goba works in photography, you yourself cannot do otherwise. You're not competing, and that's the best thing: together you build a story that neither of you would have been able to tell so effectively alone. I remember a nasty episode from our last trip to Iceland. Once we roamed all day long through a barren environment near the country's east coast, together with a group of reindeer hunters and their guide. The hunters' task was to shoot one reindeer each, for which a considerable sum had been paid in advance. We weren't after bloody scenes, and instead wanted pictures of the graceful animals, we wanted a story about their life in this green, mossy plain, where the polar cotton-grass sways among the pools. In order to keep up with the men, not being suitably dressed, we took off our shoes from time to time. So as not to get them wet, we waded through the ice-cold waters barefoot. Thus, we forded streams and traversed the margins of bogs, where the moss swayed under our feet. The hunters were out of luck. The few reindeer they saw with binoculars were running in the opposite direction. The men were becoming grumpier all the time. This long, tiring walk came to an end when we got into our four-wheel drives and travelled a good way further. I stayed near the car, while Kaspars and the hunters went forward. Gazing at the activities of the men, I concluded that the guess had paid off. Reindeer antlers were swaying in the distance. This was no handful of animals, but a vast herd! The men chose one direction, while Kaspars approached somewhat further away. Then, unexpectedly, the reindeer once again fled from the hunters. Towards the photographer. No doubt, Goba appreciated what a dodgy situation it was, but in his wish to get a good picture, he continued making his way towards the reindeer. A few brief, chilling minutes passed. One of the hunters, a very primitive type, turned his gun in that direction: not at the reindeer, but at Kaspars. He doesn't boast much about what he's managed to photograph, and from time to time he wonders what people see in those of his photos that have been made public. The pictures that Goba had taken only as illustrative material for his documentary film "Seda. People of the Marsh" travelled around Europe last year, and in the end this was the only work by a Latvian photographer included in the "Instant Europe" exhibition curated by the influential Francesco Bonami. However, these are not chance pictures. The people in the little town of Seda, who had moved here from the whole of the former Soviet Union, are so confident, smiling and openly trustful in the photos not because Goba charmed them at that particular moment, but because he'd been visiting them for three years already. He'd filmed the machinery working in the peat fields, he'd been together with the people of Seda at the festivities of 9 May and 18 November, at church festivals and at the time of the referendum on joining the European Union, which Seda voted against. In this materialist world, only if you don't reckon with your own time and welfare, and if you have a thirst for knowledge of the kind ordinarily lost in adulthood, you can wait for the moment when people open up in front of the photo or film camera. Even a marvel is no accident. I'm not entitled to reveal all the rules of Goba's ga-me, and neither can I assert that they're known to me. However, it seems that the journalists are right. The story of the man Goba is every bit as good as his photos. If it's possible at all to separate one from the other. | |
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