Rīga’s New Underground Scene in Arnis Balčus’ Documentary Art Photographs

This article aims to show how documentary-style art photography can be used in the sociological study of a relatively closed and transgressive subculture. The example of the article is the current Rīga new underground music scene centred around punk and DIY. The pictures selected as samples are from the book Scēna by photographer Arnis Balčus, published in early 2024. The article includes excerpts from sociologist Jānis Daugavietis’s conversation with Arnis Balčus about photographing this scene, as well as interpretations of this phenomenon. Alongside a visual-ethnographic analysis of the scene, a close reading of the photographs was carried out by lead author and the young people seen in the close-ups in two of the photographs. The visual codes that can be read in these photographs demonstrate how the Rīga scene is part of the global punk subculture and reveals its connections with similar scenes in nearby foreign countries. Reading the pictures on a micro level, we see both the creativity of the young people and their anxiety. The article demonstrates that documentary art photographs can serve as research data, which can be either a subject of analysis in itself or a tool for formulating new research questions or hypotheses. Keywords: Rīga’s new underground music scene, sociology, photographic method, documentary art photographs as research data, Arnis Balčus