From local history to global visual culture: the evolution of Baltic photography on the threshold of the twenty-first century

ENThis article looks into the curatorial practices that were employed in two historically informative exhibitions of photography from the Baltic States. Opening to the public in Kiel (Germany) in 1993, The Memory of Images: Baltic Photo Art Today focused on issues concerning national identity within the three former USSR republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. The other exhibition was Don't Worry - Be Curious!, which opened in 2007, also in Kiel. Although it still featured the work of practitioners from the three former USSR republics, their photographs were presented alongside artworks from other Baltic countries, such as Germany, Finland, and Sweden. It intended to position in a global context some regional photographic work about national identity and voice criticism of capitalist culture. Indeed, following the early 1990s' restoration of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian independence, the Baltic region saw an entire political, social, and economic transformation between the 1993 and 2007 exhibitions. Studying the different types of narratives that the exhibitions resulted in, I argue that this transformation also led to reformulations of the role of art - especially photography - in the three Baltic states. The article, therefore, considers the two exhibitions as manifestations of politically related cultural discourses characteristic to post-communist countries.