My wife and I went to her nephew’s wedding in Latvia last March. Aside from photographing the wedding and parties etc, I of course found the STREET. I was amazed at what Latvia offered. The wedding stuff was in Riga and I did the entire event with a dedicated passion.

Ok, ok…so what? Yeah, I hit the streets as much as I could. Now Latvia thinks different then Philadelphia. They have their own definition of cold. I don’t like it. The definition or the cold. I won’t complain about that issue back here for a long time. We stayed in an apartment in Riga that was an Aunt to my sister-in-laws friend. The apartment was a 5th floor walkup. To be honest, I didn’t care. Ya see…the building has not been repaired or painted since the start of  World War 2.

Dasha

Above is my niece Dasha. She’s Russian and came to the wedding and also to meet me. She had been here before and wanted to take me for a walk to see Old Riga. Actually, it was the Ghetto region but it’s called Old Riga. As I was making photos, I could see bullet holes on the walls. They were still there. Unreal! We came to a section and Dasha was nervous because it was a rough region. I told her that this place looked highly improved in comparison to the ghetto in Philadelphia. Being the protective guy that I am, I agreed to take her to safer quarters.

When we got back to the rest of the family, I insisted that we go for a walk to the other side of Riga.

 

We went to the shopping district and of course the women wanted to do just that. My wife told me that I’ll be very bored in the stores because I don’t speak Latvian or Russian. What to do I asked. Would you mind just walking around for an hour or two? I pouted and said….sure. Oh yeah….I took off like a bat out of…of…..you know where. Man, I got lost in the streets and the crowds. I had a reference point so I wasn’t worried about getting lost.

I made many photos and here are two more from the trip. Above was entering the Underpass and below is inside the same place.

 

 

I posted these on Flickr last year but these are part of a collection of prints I just sold. The collector asked me to post them so he can show them to some friends

More fresh things tomorrow………Peace my friends…..don

PS….don’t forget the magazine is available on Monday. Go to the Facebook link over there on the right….