Inta Ruka to Open Rural Portrait Exhibition in Jūrmala

Photographer Inta Ruka’s portrait series documenting rural Latvian communities will open to the public in Jūrmala, featuring works that have not been publicly exhibited in the country, Diena reported.

The exhibition, titled Mani lauku ļaudis (My Country People), runs from November 19, 2026, to January 30, 2027, at the Jūrmala Cultural Space and Environmental Design Center in Dubulti. Admission to the gallery space on Pils iela is free of charge for all visitors.

Decades of Documentation in Rural Latvia

The photographic cycle began in the early 1980s in the Balvi region as a summer assignment for a photography club. Ruka lived for two weeks with neighbors of her mother, accompanying a local mail carrier named Inīte from house to house to capture residents in their daily environments.

“I was young and shy. I went to the country to my mother’s neighbors. I lived there for two weeks of my vacation and took pictures. I walked along with the mailwoman Inīte from house to house and took pictures. Then I also realized how extremely interesting every person is,” Ruka recalled, as reported by Diena.

The resulting portraits offer a direct, unembellished, and respectful view of rural life. Subjects are photographed in their homes and yards alongside everyday objects that serve as witnesses to their era. Ruka routinely returned to her subjects over the years, bringing back physical photographs and listening to their life stories recounting the war and the collective farm era.

International Recognition and New Additions in Jūrmala

Ruka was born in Riga in 1958 and developed her individual artistic vision under the influence of photographer Egons Spuris. Since 1984, she has worked with a classic Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera mounted on a tripod, relying on natural light.

The series first gained public attention in Tallinn during the late 1980s. In 1999, Ruka represented Latvia at the Venice Biennale with photographs from the same cycle. Her work has since been exhibited across Europe and entered international art collections.

The upcoming Jūrmala exhibition features 32 portraits total. Crucially, the display includes works that have not been shown in Latvia since the cycle’s last domestic exhibition in 1999 at the Decorative Arts and Design Museum in Riga.

The exhibition venue is open Tuesday through Friday from 11.00 to 18.00, and Saturday from 11.00 to 16.00. The center remains closed on Sundays and Mondays.