Artist: Gunārs Binde, Pēteris Korsaks, Vilhelms Mihailovskis, Leonīds Tugaļevs, Varis Sants, Juris Kmins – Latvia

A group of famous and acknowledged Latvian photographers, Gunārs Binde, Pēteris Korsaks, Vilhelms Mihailovskis, Leonīds Tugaļevs, Varis Sants and Juris Kmins united under the company “Dizaina Manufaktūra” and organized the photo campaign “Cēsnieks 2006”. Its main goal was to portray people during the anniversary celebration of the Latvian town Cēsis 800 anniversary celebration.

“The main emphasis of the particular project was placed on people and the elements that surrounded the person. The aim of this project is to create and to form the testimony about the people of the present time.”

The attention paid to those who participated in the campaign reminds of a noble gesture from the ancient times’ culture, when only noblemen and prosperous townsmen could afford to order their portrait.

These photos will reveal the future generations what the 21st century residents looked like, what they wore, how behaved, and possibly will stir up the imagination exactly in the same way as it happens to us now, when we see the photos taken in the beginning of the 20th century.”

How beautiful is life passing by

Artist: Harold Naaijer – The Netherlands

Harold Naaijer is a self taught photographer from the Netherlands, born in 1964 in the university city of Delft. He started full time photography after working 11 years for the trade unions. Life itself is his theme and he tries to capture it by spending loads of time on the streets, in people’s houses (where he sometimes get invited) and at gatherings where people have time to be bothered by a photographer.

Together with his friend and writer Donald Niedekker he published 4 books with stories playing in Berlin, Marseille, Liverpool and Rotterdam. With Jan Keulen he created a book about Iran, 10 years after the revolution. Naaijer’s images appeared in several exhibitions in the Netherlands, Syria, Portugal and soon in Finland and India. Currently living in Lisbon, Portugal, Naaijer works for two magazines and is also involved in corporate photography.

His new show is about woman from different parts of Europe. It is about beauty, expectations of life, dreams, power and hope.

The Quiet after the Storm

Artist: Ivor Prickett – Ireland

The Quiet after the Storm:

Croatia’s displaced Serbs

The Croatian war of Independence displaced over 300,000 Croatian Serbs between 1991 and 1995. It was towards the end of the war that 200,000 of them were uprooted by a Croatian military offensive known as Operation Storm. This was the single largest displacement of people in Europe since World War Two.

Thirteen years later people are still trickling back despite the odds, in order to reclaim houses and rebuild lives in their homeland. This body of work follows the journeys of several Croatian Serbs who have returned from living in exile, and some of those who still remain as refugees in Serbia.

Artist: Ivor Prickett – Ireland

Dystopia / Utopia : Growing Pains in the New China

Artist: James Whitlow Delano – United States

Buddhism says that everything is an illusion. China seems to move from one to another.

Utopia or Dystopia? China is both and neither. In sheer

numbers, the gulf between rich and poor is greater than at any time since the Communist Revolution and it shows no signs of stopping any time soon. It has also been centuries since this country has approached its true potential in global influence.

The Middle Kingdom has returned to the center of the global stage.