Biometrics

On 5 July 2018, the government adopted the Personal Data Processing Law, which stipulates, among other things, that photographs taken in the public space can be made public only with the permission of the persons that can be seen in the images, or their face, tattoos and other signs of identification must be made invisible.

In my work Biometrics I want to emphasise the potentially absurd consequences of the data protection law, at the same time providing an equally absurd method for photographers to suggest how they should work from now on. To illustrate it, instead of selfie sticks I gave my models self-defence sticks. Thus, with this new tool of self-protection, masking has become possible in the core medium of the ocular-centric age – photography.

Adelīna Kalniņa (1998) is a young Latvian photographer who has recently graduated from the ISSP School with these series.