BIO EST has teamed up with United Photo Industries to present Ulvi Tiit’s vintage slide project “Second Memory.” In 2008 photographer Ulvi Tiit initiated a countrywide collection of amateur slides in Estonia from the time period 1970 to 1990, zooming in on the visual memory and everyday representation of Estonia at the time. The exhibition will offer a unique insight into the formation of contemporary Estonian identity, as it reflects the fact that these two decades have strongly influenced the mindset of a generation now between their 20′s and 40′s.
The conceptual starting point of the project is amateur photography as cultural practice during a time when 35mm cameras and ORWO color film from the German Democratic Republic became widely popular in Estonia. The selection of images is presented in small lightboxes, emulating the tradition of watching slides from a projector. Pairing the visual narrative of the vintage slides with contemporary blowups of the same material, the artist brings out subjective emotions in the images.
The exhibition is accompanied by a nightly outdoor screening program of Estonian films and vintage ads from the 1970′s and 1980′s.
Ulvi Tiit is a photographer and installation artist currently based in Tallinn, Estonia. After earning her MA in Photography from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2002, she started out with a new generation of visual artists. As a conceptual photographer, Ulvi Tiit has participated in more than ten international exhibitions at institutions such as the Rogaland Art Center (Stavanger, Norway) and Artgenda (Hamburg, Germany), as well as the Estonian Art Museum and Tallinn Art Hall.