Zenta Dzividinska

Probably the publication of Zenta Dzividzinska's works right now is driven by the circumstances. The photographic rights of "mums" freshly captured by her are protected by two waves of the contemporary culture: the feministic and especially the technological. Part of the images shown in the exhibition "Black and White" have an obvious similarity with the so called fake photography, it is created by the formal structure of the image and the subjects as well, that remind the documents recorded by carelessly controllable digital camera.

The images shown in the exhibition are created in the second half of the sixties: in time when the photography and its appearance had become an important technique in arts. Every publication is a subject to a selection. But I have to admit that "Black and White", the first solo exhibition of Zenta Dzividzinska, remind more of archaeological excavations in some private territory – in the collection of negatives created thirty years ago. That's why the bigger part of the exhibition consists of previously unpublished works. Beside the "excavations" they demonstrate a striking tradition of the postmodern age – free inclusion in an unexpected context. The photographic experiments of Zenta Dzividzinska would not be called consciously constructed aesthetic messages in the time when they were made. They gain the traits of artistic theory right now, found and exhibited after a long time. In contrary to the tradition of curator's selection, the choice have been made by the author herself, thus transforming her role from "just" photographer to a "constructor" of the exhibition. Although a woman is one of the most popular themes of photographic expression, the women we see in the photographs of Zenta are not there because of the tradition, but more likely, to adjust the tradition. Her "wandering", "non-purposeful" lens has captured a woman, urged by unorganized reasons, but the artist herself explains it with her "interest about non-beautiful people", directing our attention towards the kitschy meaning of the word "beautiful" in the context of describing humans and ancient sculptures as well.

We almost never know what really is true. If art would not been so closely connected with the culture, especially the visual culture, I can assume that its absolute achievements would be magnificent. Nine photographs in the exhibition "Black and White" that have emerged from the state they were left 30 years ago from "ordinary" pictures became – allowing myself to be romantic – a "time machine". You can go in all known cultural directions and dream about what could be.

Inga Steimane, art critic

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Zenta Dzividzinska

Zenta Dzividzinska was born in Code Parish,* Latvia, in 1944. From 1961, she studied at the Riga Secondary School of Applied Arts and graduated as a master artist in 1966. While studying there, she attended a photography course taught by the notable Latvian photographer Gunārs Binde. Meanwhile, under the influence of her teacher, artist Kārlis Sūniņš, she developed an interest and comprehension of avant-garde forms of artistic expression.
*Code - pronounced [tsuo’de]

She continued her education in the preparatory course of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic State Academy of Art (1965–1967). From 1967 to 1993 she was a creative artist and designer at the state-owned company Māksla (“Art”). During the 1970s she was mainly involved in professional applied graphic design, utilizing a variety of photographic techniques in collaboration with photographer Valters Jānis Ezeriņš. She participated in applied graphic design and poster exhibitions in Riga and Moscow (1971–1976). Since the early 1990s, she has also designed several art exhibitions and has worked as a book artist and photography editor.

Dzividzinska joined the Riga Photo Club in 1965 which at the time was the main creative hub for photography in Latvia. Also in 1965, she held her first solo exhibition, “Riga Pantomime,” in the main art bookshop of Riga, “Mākslas grāmata” (Art Book).

Between 1968 and 1972 she participated in local and international photography exhibitions. During this brief but prolific time, Dzividzinska became known for her images of women, atypical for Latvian photographic art. Photographs such as Alone (1967) or Self-Portrait (1968) stood out sharply against the predominant male perspective that favored images of women as pretty and submissive objects. Dzividzinska noted that “In the mid-1960s, Sarmīte Kviesīte and I were the only young female artists in a company of men.”

Dzividzinska has experimented with the creative possibilities of photogram, photomontage and optical distortion, and has tried out the techniques of staged photography. At this time she created her Riga Pantomime series (1964–1966), consisting of black and white, partially abstract, expressive photographs, mostly capturing the rehearsals and backstage moments.

Her photographic work from the 1960s, however, was soon forgotten as Dzividzinska focused her effort on design work and did not continue to exhibit with the Riga Photo Club.

Nevertheless, since the early 1960s, Dzividzinska continued making a collection of documentary photographs under the title House Near the River, recording snapshots of everyday life in her ancestral home in a village where she grew up and where she returned to live with her husband, painter Juris Tifentals, at the end of the 1960s.

Most of the photographs from this collection have never been exhibited or published, and many have never been even printed. A few were first published and exhibited in her second solo exhibition, Black and White, in Riga in 1999, curated by art historian Inga Šteimane.

This exhibition was followed by another exhibition where archival images were mixed with more recent images from the House Near the River series, called I Don’t Remember a Thing in Riga, 2005. The exhibition was followed by an eponymous photobook (2007). Although the exhibition and photobook was met by a certain critical acclaim, it did not bring a notable change in the general perception of her work. In an art and photography scene, still dominated by a few notable male photographers, Dzividzinska’s idiosyncratic style and the autobiographical approach to the photographic medium still has not found a visible place.

Dzividzinska died in Riga, Latvia, in 2011.

In 2021, part of the archive of her negatives (some never developed, many never printed), vintage prints, contact prints, selected exhibition works, notes, and documents found a safe and permanent home in the collection of the National Library of Latvia where this collection is researched and curated by art historian Līga Goldberga.

https://www.artdays.net/zdz-bio