Authors
Ineta Done1; 1 Art Academy of Latvia, Latvia Discussion
The character of the social and political systems, as well as the ideals and aspirations of the times, manifest in the buildings and urban structures. Architecture not only shapes the spatial structure of society, but also participates in the realization of social, ideological, and political goals and objectives. Photography in the 1970s and 1980s was used as means to emphasize the cultural value and importance of modernist and postmodernist architecture to the wider public. This paper addresses how Soviet Latvian photographers choose to visualize these representations of modernist and postmodernist ideas, what techniques they used, the purposes these photographs served, and the relationship between the changing urban environments and their representations in photography. One of the most prominent Latvian architectural photographers of the Soviet period was Laimonis Stīpnieks (1936) who portrayed the city of Riga, Latvia – typical residential dwellings, and administrative and public buildings. Stīpnieks' understanding of architectural photography was significantly influenced by his training as an architect, and his vision and approach were based on academic professionalism. Stīpnieks participated in the process of photographing the major Latvian modernist projects of the 1970s, including their construction, capturing the leading trends and introducing guidelines for architectural photography in Latvia. Keywords: photography, soviet modernism, architecture. 
