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Artists' Statement.
Georgs Avetisjans (*1985) is a Latvian-born lens-based visual storyteller, designer, and bookmaker. He received his MA in Photography from the University of Brighton (UK) in 2016. Shortlisted for the prestigious Arles Prix du Livre Book Award (2024) in France, the APhF:24 Book Award (2024) in Greece, nominated for Magnum Foundation Heat Fellowship (2023) in the USA, A New Gaze 4 Vontobel Contemporary Photography Prize (2023) in Switzerland, Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award (2021) in Germany, received the Riga Photography Biennial Award (2019) in Riga, honourable mention on the Poznań Photo Diploma Award (2019) in Poland, the Magnum Photos Graduate Photographers' Award (2017) in London, and was selected for Plat(t)form at Fotomuseum Winterthur (2021) in Switzerland. He is one of the artists for the 3rd and 4th cycles of PARALLEL - European Photo Based Platform (2019-2021) in Lisbon, Docking Station (2017) in Amsterdam and International Summer School of Photography (ISSP) (2015-2018) in Riga.
Through rigorous research, his work examines contemporary stories through a historical lens. He has been participating in international shows since 2015. His works have previously been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, China, Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia, Greece, France, Denmark, Hungary, and the UK.
In July 2018, he published his first photobook, "Homeland. The Longest Village in the Country" during the opening week of Les Rencontres d'Arles in France. He officially launched the book in November 2018 with a solo show at the Latvian Museum of Photography in Riga, Latvia. The book was picked as one of the top 5 in 2018 for The British Journal of Photography by Arnis Balcus, editor in chief of FK Magazine and director of Riga Photomonth and also selected by The Calvert Journal annual round-up among the best of 8 photobooks from 2018. In July 2023, he published his second book "Motherland. Far Beyond the Polar Circle" along with a solo show at the Latvian Railway History Museum in Riga, Latvia, curated by Mākslai Vajag Telpu (Art Needs Space). This book was shortlisted for the prestigious Arles Prix du Livre Book Award and between the top 10 books for the APhF:24 Book Award in 2024.
Georgs completed the documentary photography class TJN by Andrejs Grants in 2009 and attended two of the ISSP workshops: 'The Narrative Portrait' by Alessandra Sanguinetti (Magnum Photos) in 2015 and 'Photobook as Object' by Yumi Goto and Jan Rosseel in 2018. He was also nominated in 2017 for a residency at the 'Docking Station' in Amsterdam to continue working on his homeland project - a story about the sea, land and memory in the country's longest seaside village and how time affects and changes our sense of place. In 2019, he was selected as one of the 30 artists for the 3rd Parallel - European Photo Based Platform cycle, where he developed his motherland series - a story of a town which was built upon the bones of Soviet prisoners, a city in which many deported Latvians once lived.
Georgs is primarily interested in multi-layered, research-based storytelling about contemporary issues from the historical and ethnographical aspects on the line between reality and fiction, as well as poetic, metaphoric and authentic imagery in the field of documentary reality. He is also interested in photobook making, archival materials, notes, and investigative recordings, as well as how photography, design, and materials could shape the story of an entire photographic project.
The themes of his work are primarily about regional and national identity, genetics, ethnography, memory, nostalgia, fantasies and imagination of the future, and existentialism. Years ago, as a photographer, he started to explore subjective aspects such as moods and associations in documentary reality, which formed, and still forms, his visual narrative. He is working on a final piece in his long-term trilogy, "Krunk. The Crane that Flew over the Fatherland", a story about his father, genetics, Armenian diaspora and history of the land of his forefathers in Armenia and Georgia where each part of the trilogy deals separately with the notions and meanings of Homeland, Fatherland and Motherland from a deeply personal and autobiographical perspective. He is also working on a new project since 2021 called "Starlet" – a story of an exceptionally secret location or a town in the woods of the northern Kurzeme region by the Baltic Sea where the Soviet army maintained several secret weapons and the KGB used them to spy on NATO communication between Europe and the USA. The intent is to explore the location-specific recent history of Soviet rule to encourage dialogue on general surveillance. The narrative is based on living memory, research and the few available archives.
George Avetisyan ©
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