Rūta Kalmuka

In her project Pupa, Ieva Maslinskaite explores photography as a medium in flux, mirroring the transformative state an insect undergoes in its pupal stage. By allowing bacteria and fungi to colonize large-format film negatives depicting highly controlled Dutch landscapes, Maslinskaite challenges conventional, anthropocentric hierarchies of image-making. In doing so, she shifts photography’s purpose from a fixed representation to a site of ecological habitation and ongoing metamorphosis.

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Rūta Kalmuka’s Dzen revives an ancient Latvian spring solstice ritual, once practiced by the Livs, involving the symbolic banishment of evil spirits and the calling of light. Her method—using a large-format camera and direct positive prints on photo paper and fabric—constitutes a contemporary ritual of its own. By integrating ancestral folklore with a reflective creative process, Kalmuka underscores ritual’s capacity to heal and renew both cultural identity and personal well-being.

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In Visvaldas Morkevicius’s I Want to Tell You Something, grief is articulated as a non-linear, endlessly revisited terrain. Morkevicius integrates archival photographs, images of everyday objects, and repeated scanning and printing to construct a visual echo of loss. This approach emphasizes the fragility of memory while advancing toward acceptance, becoming, in essence, a farewell letter to a former self.

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Across these three works, a unifying thread is the emphasis on transformation—both of the photographic medium and of personal or communal experience. Maslinskaite’s bacterial interventions on large-format negatives invite an ecological metamorphosis that challenges anthropocentric control; Kalmuka’s revival of an ancient ritual foregrounds the cyclical interplay of darkness and light as a means of cultural and personal renewal; and Morkevicius’s layered images of grief chart a non-linear passage toward acceptance and self-redefinition. While each artist addresses distinct subject matter—ranging from environmental processes to ancestral folklore and the fragile terrain of memory—they converge in using photography as a space of transition, reflection, and continuous becoming, revealing how images can evolve with the very conditions that shape them.

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The selecting committee consists of:

Iveta Gabaliņa | ISSP Curator/Co – Founder

Julija Berkoviča | ISSP Director/Co – Founder

Kulla Laas | Director of Tallinn Photomonth 

Ieva Meilute-Svinkūniene | Curator