UNTITLED (Latvia, 1983-1986)
Janis Knakis produces photographs because he detests language. His experience is that language and words interfere with, and ultimately corrupt reality. For him, the illustration of his thesis, one that outstrips all others, is the effect of propaganda, a phenomenon that penetrated every corner of life in Latvia in the 1980s. Knakis has incorporated his views in a series of dark and surrealistic photographs. These montages were both a protest against and an alternative for the social-realistic visual language that was prescribed by the communists – according to Knakis, ‘lords of the age of horror, who imposed their rules everywhere and soaked the colour out of the world.’
