A few years ago, while going through the Strenči glass plate collection and doing research for the book “Stikla Strenči” / “Glass Strenči” at The Latvian Museum of Photography a series of portraits taken in the studio caught our attention. The images featured a whimsical background – a spruce tree perpetually falling. The faces in the photographs changed but the spruce kept on falling, suspended in mid-air somewhere over the shoulders of the people of Strenči.

During our April visit to the former Strenči Photo Workshop, we came across a glass plate negative captioned “River Gauja between Strence and Valmiera”. This particular copy, intended for postcard production, also featured the ever-falling spruce. An unknown artist had painted it onto the backdrop wall of the studio. So, for the exhibition we decided to pick up the thread of these portraits embracing the idea that, as long as these images exist, this spruce will never fall down. It has remained suspended there for the past 5 years of our work with the collection and all throughout the remarkable history of over 100 years since the establishment of the Workshop (photography studio) by Dāvis Spunde.