Andrejs Strokins' residency in Wilson, USA

Last year we were happy to organise a residency exchange with the Eyes on Main Street photography festival in Wilson, North Carolina (USA). While Italian photographer Andrea Torrei was working in Riga, Latvian photographer Andrejs Strokins spent the month of November documenting the everyday moments in Wilson.

During his residency, Andrejs focused on the complex relationship between people and the environment they inhabit: “I was reflecting on how people are shaping and transforming landscapes over time - from the farming communities that have worked the land for generations, to the suburban developments that are struggling to attract new residents. The visual notes taken are small clues trying to decode the strange (for me) substance of a suburban American town.”

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Andrejs Strokins (1984) is a Latvian photographer living and working in Riga. He works across documentary photography, as well as with vernacular images and found archives. Strokins holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Printmaking Department of the Art Academy of Latvia. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, including at the Latvian Museum of Photography (2015), The Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016), Riga Photography Biennial (2016), Unseen Amsterdam (2016), kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2017), Latvian National Museum of Art (2017), Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018), and the contemporary art festival Survival Kit (2019). He has received numerous awards, including Foam Talents. In 2017 Orbita published his first book Palladium, which features a photo archive from one of Latvia’s Soviet-era movie theatres.