• Early Works

    I’m pretending to be dead drunk, 1990

  • Early Works

    My cans and me, 1992

  • Early Works

    Composition with advertisement of Ballantines, glass of water and lighting lighter, 1997

  • Early Works

    I was fascinated by reproducing erotic images, 1993

  • Early Works

    Me and my cousin drank coca-cola and pretended to be poisoned by it, 1992

  • Early Works

    hey were all aware of photography’s importance and they wanted their expressions of physical power to be documented, 1992-3

  • Early Works

    Composition with duck and telephone (in the background oil radiator),1992

  • Early Works

    Maths teacher, 1993

  • Early Works

    The unofficial inauguration of newcomers in the gymnasium, 1993

Early Works

Artists have a tendency to hide or distance themselves from their earliest experiments. But not Latvian-born photographer Ivars Gravlejs, who's known for his candid and reckless artworks, and who has devoted an entire publication to his first creative endeavours at school, albeit between or after lessons more than in the classroom. “I often felt nauseous before going to school because of the humiliation that I faced with my teachers. The only way to survive school was to do something creative…” Gravlejs says. Early Works is a look at 1990s Latvia through the eyes of a schoolboy, as well as a satire of the way photography is taught.

Early Works is available from MACK books.