The Latvia I Never Knew

An ongoing exploration of memory and Latvian history

The Missing Years is an ongoing series of digital collages based on found photographs from Latvia in the 1930s.

The project emerged from a gap in my own family history. My ancestors left Latvia around 1918 and returned in the 1960s, leaving several decades absent from our family’s visual memory.

Working with historical photographs collected in Riga, I explore this unfamiliar period through digital interventions, embroidery-inspired patterns, colour, and unexpected visual connections.

Rather than attempting to reconstruct the past, I create an imagined dialogue with it. The original photographs remain visible, while new elements introduce a contemporary perspective, connecting personal memory with a history I did not experience.

Ongoing project, 2026.