Auftakt
2005–2010
“Auftakt” is a musical term that describes the conductor's silent, upward stroke—a preparatory gesture made just before the music begins. This gesture, though inaudible, carries within it the tempo, character, and full essence of the sound to come. In my work, Auftakt symbolizes this suspended moment of anticipation, a paradoxical space where silence is charged with the promise of transformation.
Begun in 2005, this project is a meditation on everyday life, capturing the ephemeral and intangible moments that often go unnoticed. The concept of Auftakt extends beyond its musical origin to encompass the tension-filled interval that precedes any significant change or event. It represents the "indecisive moment" that comes just before Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment," holding a fragile balance of opposing forces: calmness and anxiety, stillness and motion, connection and isolation.
Joanna L. Cresswell described Auftakt as a continuous collection of "moments before moments," exploring the tension between what has not yet happened and what is about to occur. The grainy, black-and-white photographs in this project exude a haunting quality, their blurred and unfocused views challenging conventional perceptions of clarity. Subjects such as hands, bodies, windows, and animals dissolve into an immersive darkness, each image tied to the next through a melancholic uncertainty.
While many photographs were taken in my home country, Latvia, during a period foreshadowing political and economic crisis, the broader context of time and place is not the primary focus. It is a visual ode to what comes before dissonance and disturbance—a meditation on the paradoxical balance between stillness and motion, silence and sound.
Like the conductor’s stroke or the fleeting equilibrium of a thrown object in physics, Auftakt holds a suspended moment, charged with opposing forces and infinite possibilities.
In this work, photography becomes a vessel for the intangible, a means to translate the imperceptible tension of life into something both haunting and visceral. Through this ongoing exploration, Auftakt captures the ephemeral beauty of the everyday—moments that vanish as soon as they appear yet leave a lasting impression, echoing the silence that precedes sound.
