Inta Ruka

Interview by Jean Wainwright

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 18 Numbers 3 & 4, 1999

Transcript

Jean Wainwright: I’m here with Inta Ruka at the Latvian Pavilion, which is in a church. Could we talk about the images here and the way that you’ve responded to the space?

Inta Ruka: I have worked for twenty years and I take portraits and I work with country people and city people too. Here are photos from the largest collection, about 160 photos. I started to take photos in 1981.

JW: What camera did you use in 1981?

IR: (Zorki?), a Russian camera, and after that I bought a Rolliflex. I take photos in the area where my parents were born, and each year I come back and take more pictures.

JW: They are very simple.

IR: Life is not so easy for them. This woman lost her husband and she had with two small children and then she came back to her mother and they lived together.

JW: Each of these photographs has such spirit and beauty.

IR: It was very interesting, because I met these people, and started to speak to them and they talked about their lives and about the 2nd World War and many different situations.

JW: So here you’ve got smaller images and in the main part of the church you have very large images.

IR: Yes, this was made especially for this wall and this large one was also specially made.

JW: Did you shoot these photographs in the same village?

IR: Yes, but in different years.

JW: Can we talk a little bit about your working methods?

IR: I always use a tripod, because when I take photos like that I use 1 second or a half second speed.

JW: So they really have to be quite still?

IR: Yes, they stay still. I don’t use flash because it’s not possible to have flash because I have a very old camera from 1937. I always use this place where they live, inside or near this house.

JW: Because it’s a very gentle light.

IR: Yes I always use this light. When I work and I take a bicycle, some clothes, a tripod; I can’t take much. I just want to show these people.