Fire Ritual, 2025

Title- Fire Rituals 2024 Solstice rituals -sun, fire, water- welcome celebrations of Midsummer captured across the Baltic country of Latvia. Latvia has a rich tapestry of authentic contemporary cultural pagan ties to the summer solstice. The sparks in this fire ritual were created by people throwing their flower crowns from the previous year into the fire to bring good blessings for the next year. In Latvia, I was searching for traces of the rituals that I imagine that my female Eastern European ancestors celebrated before immigrating overseas in 1918. I was an artist in residence at Pedvale Art Park in Latvia in 2024.

Dr Tamara Voninski is a photographer and filmmaker.
She is a Sessional Academic in the Master of Film and
Screen Arts program at the University of Sydney (2016-
present). Voninski is a founding member of the Australian based
visual storytelling collective Oculi (2000-present)
www.oculi.com.au. She is the current President of the arts
organisation (2023-now). She was awarded a PhD at The
University of Sydney through her practice-led visual
research.

Her recent arts practice and academic research explores
the liminal space between still and moving image and the
female gaze. Her photographs have won international
awards and residencies including: International Pictures of
the Year Awards, Art Gallery of NSW residency at Cite
Internationale des Arts in Paris, Pedvale Art Park residency Latvia,
FotocreativeBA residency and the inaugural Alexia
Foundation Photography for World Peace grant. She is a
finalist for the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize 2025.