I photograph between presence and disappearance.

My name is Jana Rāga, though I sign my photographs as Yana Raaga. I am a photographer from Alūksne — a small town in northeastern Latvia, near the borders with Estonia and Russia. This place — remote, quiet, and sometimes harsh — has shaped my vision, my patience, and my ability to notice the subtle.

My photographic perspective has also been shaped by my education in environmental and interior design. Space, rhythm, balance, and light are my inner guides in photography as well.

Since 2016, I have been photographing what often remains unnoticed — silence, boundaries, waiting, and moments that have not yet become stories. My approach is rooted in observation, composition, and light. To put it differently: I search for whispers, not for shouts.

The most valuable things I can see and capture, living far from big cities and their noisy events, are nature and its surroundings. I have several long-term projects — Windows of a Small Town, 200 Meters Above the Sea, By the Laws of Nature: Chaos and Order, Let the River Carry Me, If I Were a Road..., From the Quiet Side. These works have emerged over years of walking and observing the same borderland territory — recording the fragile rhythm of nature, the fog, the emptiness, and the light.

Alongside my quiet life in Alūksne, I travel and photograph people and events on the streets of Europe. There too, I am drawn to what often goes unnoticed — isolated figures, tensions in public space, and the fine line between presence and disappearance.

One of my projects — The Unseen — is dedicated to precisely such people: those who are right in front of us, yet remain outside our attention. This series is about social deafness and about trying to find dignity where indifference often prevails — to preserve the quiet story before it disappears.

My work

My photographs are created both in Latvian countryside and small towns, and on the streets of European cities. I document landscapes that shift with the light, and people who remain in the shadows — more often as a presence, rarely as the central figure.

I have held five solo exhibitions in Latvia. The largest of them — For My City’s 100: Between Moments and Places in One Space — opened in Alūksne in 2020 and was included in the city’s official centenary program. I have also participated in several group exhibitions, including Karosta – Foto Osta in Liepāja, The Earth is Burning in Madona, The World Through the Eyes of Women in Haifa, and State of the World in Paris.

In 2024, my series Hearts Praying for Kidnapped was included in the finalist list of the international competition PX3 State of the World.

I believe that looking is not enough — we must also learn to notice.