In Inta Ruka's portrait, you get to know the person. The look that meets the camera is unmistakably natural. The photographs are personal, revealing and disarming.

Inta Ruka was born in 1958 in Riga, Latvia. She grew up with her mother in a rented apartment under simple conditions and trained as a seamstress. On the day of her graduation she was given a camera by her mother and since then she has devoted herself to photography full time. With the camera, her shyness disappeared. She joined the photography group Ogre and learned the craft.

In the early 1980s, Ruka traveled to her mother's home village of Balvi on the Russian border to photograph. She accompanied the postman by bicycle and got to meet all the inhabitants of the village. The photographs resulted in the picture series My Country People (1983–2000). The project became Ruka's international breakthrough when she represented Latvia at the Venice Biennale in 1999.

Size: 19.69"W 27.56"H (50x70 cm)

Printed on 170g FSC-certified paper.