Valts Kleins

Valts Kleins (1960–2025) began his career in the 1980s, when he gained a reputation as a subjective documentalist with the photographers of the group “A”. In the late 1990s, he reached the pinnacle of the Latvian photographic industry as one of the most in-demand advertising photographers. In parallel, Kleins also began doing formal experiments with colour photography. The conceptual series of photographic portraits “I want to be Happy” is the culmination of his social viewpoint and documental expression.

The initial aim of the portrait series was to depict children who have been forgotten and abandoned during a time of rapid social change. In order to speak with children from underprivileged families, Klein went to an orphanage on Alises Street, a boarding school in the Latgale neighborhood of Riga, as well as a juvenile colony in Cēsis, and visited collection points for stray children to talk to children from disadvantaged families. Kleins made portraits of the children and then asked them to write down their wishes on the white edges around the images. This was a gesture of cooperation and goodwill. The photographer made two promises to his subjects. Firstly, to give each of them a copy of their respective portrait. And secondly, the conviction that thoughts and ideas can materialise and via the exhibition other people would hear their stories.

Out of dozens of portraits by Kleins, ten works have been acquired for the LNMM collection. While portraits were taken in direct frontal view, each of them is unique and has its own destiny. Klein's black-and-white photographs reflect, like a mirror, in the eyes and consciousness of the viewer, without distance, prematurely grown-up children of various ages and their fears, longings, and dreams.

10 photographs from the series “I Want to be Happy“. 1992.