Dyjament (Latvian: Daugavgriva) is a northern neighborhood of Latvia’s capital, Riga.
I decided to write about Dyjament because I had ambivalent feelings regarding this place while I was doing street photography there. We went there with my beloved Kamilka on the 30th of June, 2021. Kamilka decided to take a rest on nearby Vakarbullu beach. I decided to join her later and take a walk along with Dyjament’s blocks of flats. Why had I ambivalent feelings towards Dyjament?
On the one hand, I was scared a little bit while taking street photos there.
Walking along Dyjament’s neglected blocks of flats was an odd experience for me. I cannot explain why I was scared. It was the middle of a sunny summer day. Perhaps, I felt strange because I felt that I had moved in time to the Soviet past. Dyjament’s blocks of flats reminded me of other similar brutalist buildings that I remember from the ’90s in Poland. The truth is that, firstly, I was excited while strolling through not only Dyjament but also other Riga districts.
While wandering through Daugavgriva, I noticed that this place has two beaches: one on the Bullupe river and the other on the Baltic Sea (to be more precise: Gulf of Riga).
Undoubtedly, Dyjament has the potential to be an attractive tourists destination. Still, the blocks of flats mentioned above attract mainly weirdos like me, who loves to take odd street photographs. It is still hard to explain why I like usual places to photograph, not those attractive to tourists. For example, while being in Budapest in 2017, I preferred to take pictures in the Ujpest district, not the historic city center. I love Poland, and I love the whole Central-Eastern Europe. I wonder in which cities I will be able to do street photography. Dyjament was just another brick in the wall that showed me there are still many places to discover for myself.
PS
I wrote this text on the 19th of October, 2021.
