Arnis Balcus
Arnis Balcus
Jury of FotoSlovo Award 2026
Arnis Balcus is a Chief Editor of FK Magazine. He is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on exploring Latvian identity, history, and society. He approaches his subjects in a straightforward, raw manner, using photography as a means of documenting and preserving the world around him. Through his images, he aims to capture the essence of his subjects, whether they be environment, society, or youth.
"The most important thing is to do what genuinely feels important to you. Competitions can be useful for testing your work, but you shouldn’t worry if you’re not noticed. What matters most is staying true to yourself — following your ideas and convictions and pushing forward regardless of juries or awards. The same goes for trends: they come and go, and they age quickly. Be personal, and think carefully about how you photograph, because your approach — your camera, framing, light, and so on — is your language. Don’t be neutral. Don’t be afraid to show how you see the world"
— Your work spans personal photographic projects and editorial leadership, how do you balance your own artistic practice with shaping the editorial voice of FK Magazine?
— In the magazine, I consciously try to be open to a wide range of photographic practices. At the same time, my personal priorities — more precisely, what I consider to be art photography — inevitably come through. I’m particularly drawn to socially critical projects, and that’s probably why this kind of work appears more often in the magazine than other types of photography. I do have to balance my time, but since I’ve been combining these roles for many years now, that coexistence no longer feels like an issue.
— What was your intention behind FK when you launched it, and how have it evolved over the years? What are FK Magazine goals for the future?
— At the beginning, I hoped the magazine might help unify the photography field in Latvia, perhaps even across the Baltic region, but that turned out to be rather utopian. What really matters, however, is that because the photography scene in Latvia is extremely small, the magazine doesn’t just reflect ongoing processes — it actively stimulates them. For example, we run a photo-story development program, occasionally publish books, and organize events. That, ultimately, is the main goal: not only to observe and comment on what is happening, but to actively warm up and energize the process itself.
— From your experience, what qualities make a submission stand out (conceptually or visually)? Can you name some principals when guiding curation for FK Magazine?
— First and foremost, I look at content, then at visual language and technical execution. Overall, there are relatively few socially oriented projects, while introspective, self-reflective works are much more common. Projects that address society and the world around us tend to stand out, whereas yet another poetic abstraction with an unclear purpose usually does not. It also feels important that photographers don’t merely serve the ideological trends of the moment — whether that’s climate change, eco-feminism, or ethnic minorities, but also speak about broader, universal human themes.
— Do you think Baltic photographers contribute something distinctive to contemporary discourse that is not yet fully appreciated? Or what narratives from the Baltics should be more present in major international platforms?
— Aside from the Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus, Baltic photography remains largely unknown internationally — something of a black hole. The photographic traditions in the three countries are quite different. In Latvia, observational documentary photography has dominated over the past few decades, often grounded in landscape. This is probably because unspoiled nature, especially the coastline, is one of Latvia’s greatest assets, and it’s not only photographers who are strongly drawn to themes of nature. At the same time, photographers here can feel relatively free and do bold, even crazy things, because we don’t yet have such a pathological attitude toward privacy and data protection, nor do we have a central institution that organizes (or controls) the art scene. Our environment is genuinely fertile ground for projects shaped by a peculiar post-Soviet, northern mentality, something akin to the atmosphere in Aki Kaurismäki’s films. In other words, it’s a region with few people, who don’t talk much and do weird things. This is not a disadvantage, but a value.
— What advice would you give to photographers applying to contests or submitting to magazines on how to preserve their authentic voice? How do you view trends in photography, for example such as the use of AI or the pursuit of concrete “hyped” themes?
— The most important thing is to do what genuinely feels important to you. Competitions can be useful for testing your work, but you shouldn’t worry if you’re not noticed. What matters most is staying true to yourself — following your ideas and convictions and pushing forward regardless of juries or awards. The same goes for trends: they come and go, and they age quickly. Be personal, and think carefully about how you photograph, because your approach — your camera, framing, light, and so on — is your language. Don’t be neutral. Don’t be afraid to show how you see the world.