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'A man with a moustache' is a project concieved at ISSP residency in December 2018 - January 2019 which investigates my grandfather's relationship with photography. He was an amateur photographer in the 60s and 70s living in Latvia and Germany.
The project started with a box of photographs found in my grandparents home. According to the family legend, this box contains photographs that didn't make it to the photo album, which no one could remember the looks of nor find. Myself and my grandfather went through the box on a memory and fiction journey and he meticulously described every photograph, mentioning who was pictured and where it was taken. All of them, apart from the three, were portraits either taken by him or of him and his family and friends. In the box there were also some objects, put there for preservation purposes, i.e. some postcards, my grandfathers army shoulder boards, a bottle of church oil hidden by my grandmother and a lock of hair from my mother.
The project resulted in found photographs, objects and narratives my grandfather went into during our talks.This body of work is meant to be exhibited as printed photographs and objects, accompanied by short texts.I am interested in a type of knowledge and developed practices my grandfather has build in relation to the photographs, photo equipment and related objects. Something wasn't necessarily collected, but didn't get thrown away. Which seems like a good metaphor for my grandfathers journey with photography - he quit taking photographs in the early 80s, however the artifacts - equipment and photographs - stayed behind and were archived or re-purposed.