Jānis Deinats. The First Five Years
The First Five Years, a solo exhibition of well-known Lavian photographer Jānis Deinats, is presented in the 4th Floor Exhibition Halls of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (Jaņa Rozentāla laukums 1) from 17 August to 24 November 2024, offering a documentary story about the period before the regaining of Latvia’s national independence, when changes in society were still maturing, and the artist’s camera captured the observed scenes of the disintegrating socialist system.
The title of the exhibition The First Five Years is related to the period of the creation of the works from 1989 until 1994, when Jānis Deinats’ photographic activity began. It ironically evokes memory of the popular slogan of Soviet economic planning, which urged Soviet society towards achievements.
A large part of the exhibition consists of images that seemingly represent nothing significant and whose message can only be understood from a certain distance. One would like to call the time depicted by the artist the “lyrical hero” of the show, which, with its remembrance substance, participates in the formulation of the nation’s identity. Capturing the departing socialism without pretention, the photographs create reports of accidentally experienced scenes that Jānis Deinats saw in the surrounding environment and that reflect the daily life of prosaic Soviet people, which (as it turns out) goes on in the context of important events. One such event was the vote of 4 May held behind the walls of the Supreme Council building, which was later to result in the restoration of Latvia’s independence. A time of ripening political change fixed in passing, without drama or sense of predicting the future, when the Soviet militia was associated only with a policing body that upholds the law.
In the photographs, you can follow muddled historical events and spot people whose activities proved to be essential for Latvia’s cultural and political space. Deinats has always been impressed by the idea of including in the frame witty, paradoxical situations that in Soviet period had no lack of fertile soil. Many works demonstrate the origins of the author’s individual style, which he developed in his further art.
Jānis Deinats’ studies at the Theatre Department of the Faculty of Culture and Art Sciences of the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian State Conservatory (1982–1986) took place in the environment of creative persons. Later, from 1989 onwards, there were works produced featuring artist’s contemporaries – now known and popular cultural figures who we regard as icons of freedom of the time.
Jānis Deinats’ photographs from the 1990s can be classified as a documentation of the past, that in exhibition practice of recent years is identified as part of the contemporary art process. A large number of selected compositions were realized in the form of the favourite photochemical process of the 20th century, black-and-white silver gelatine copy, which is used less and less in the experience of world photo art giving the exposition historical authenticity.
The exhibition The First Five Years does not cover all of Jānis Deinats oeuvre during mentioned period and thus does not claim to be a retrospective. Until nowadays, several of the displayed photographs were stored in the author’s archive of negatives and have never been seen before.
Jānis Deinats’ works are held in collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Latvian Photography Museum, and private collections.
Text by Diāna Barčevska
