Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Lecture “Black and White Photography Is No Archaism” by Raimo Lielbriedis

On Thursday, 15 July at 19:00 everyone is invited to attend a lecture in the series “Foto Kvartāls Readings” – “Black and White Photography Is No Archaism” by photographer and photography teacher Raimo Lielbriedis (1962).

The lecture will deal with the practical and theoretical aspects of black and white photography – technologies and the possibilities they offer today. The topicality of black and white photography is attested at Raimo Lielbriedis’ exhibition “The Black & White Stop” at the Kim? / FK Gallery that your are welcomed to attend before the lecture. All the exhibition works have been digitally printed (giclée print) from traditionally made black and white negatives using a choice of high quality materials. The development of digital print technologies allows endowing completely new qualities to an existing image material preserving the attitude towards the stability of the original both technically and visually.

Art historian Aiga Dzalbe commenting works by Raimo Lielbriedis says, “they compel one to assert that photographic image can be self-sufficient, an engaging work of art, where much more than a mere fixation of a moment of the never-ceasing flow of time is contained.” (Dzalbe, A.  Meistars starp cilvēkiem ar fotokamerām. (Master Among People and Cameras.) Foto Kvartāls, Nr. 3(23), 2010, 60.lpp.) The lecture by Raimo Lielbriedis will offer an insight into technologies that these days – in the so called digital era – lets one create photographs whose black and white aesthetics substantially differs from the everyday stream of visual information.

Raimo Lielbriedis (1962) is a photographer and photography teacher at Janis Rozentāls Riga Art School (JRRMV). He is an authority on black and white analogue photo-technologies, the author of the popular book “How to Photograph?” (Neputns, 2008). He has published numerous articles on esthetical and technological aspects of black and white photography in art periodicals.