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Riga Photomonth 2016 announces its programme

The second edition of photography festival Riga Photomonth will take place in Riga, Latvia from 2 May to 16 June. Riga Photomonth explores and showcases photography from Northern and Eastern Europe, this year under the common theme Territories, Borders and Check-Points, featuring contributions by JH Engström (SWE), Heikki Kaski (FI), Erik Kessels (NL), Igor Samolet (RU), Gordon MacDonald (UK) among others. In addition to the public programme, Riga Photomonth is hosting a portfolio review and a wide range of workshops for the emerging and mid-career photographers.

The main exhibition Territories, co-curated by JH Engströmwill open in 12 May, featuring works by seven photographers Andrew Miksys (LT), HeikkiKaski (FI), Igor Samolet (RU), Daniels Mekss (LV), Katrina Kepule (LV), Sara Skorgen Teigen (NO) and Igor Savchenko (BY), each of them focusing on a certain physical, socio-political or personal territory.

Riga Photomonth is also hosting programme SELF PUBLISH RIGA – a series of events dedicated to photobooks and self-publishing culture, organised by the ISSP. The programme includes an international photobook dummy competition, an extensive international exhibition of photobooks, a series of lectures, talks and workshops on photobooks, book publishing and design by the industry experts and bookmakers: Erik Kessels (KesselsKramer), Gordon MacDonald (GOST Books), Hester Keijser (The Independent Photo Book), Tom Mrazauskas (Brave Books), Angel Luis Gonzalez (The Library Project), Nico Baumgarten.

The public discussion programme will address such questions as the image interpretation in the post-soviet countries (with creative directors of the Kaunas Photo festival, Tallinn Photomonth, Minsk Month of Photography and Odessa/Batumi Photo Days) as well as the challenges of photomagazines in the digital age with Tim Clark (1000 Words, UK), Salvatore Vitale (Yet magazine, CH), Anastasiia Fedorova (Calvert Journal, UK), Vincent Marcilhacy (The Eyes, FR) and Arnis Balcus (FK Magazine, LV).

For the emerging and mid-career photographers Riga Photomonth is hosting a portfolio review. The festival’s public programme includes exhibitions, artist talks, workshops, lectures and film screenings, altogether more than 30 events and 9 exhibitions. The programme spans over May and June, with the highest intensity during the opening weekend from 12 May to 16 May. The full programme can be found at the Riga Photomonth webpage.