Impermanence Is an Illusion: The Freedom Monument

Riga (Brīvības piemineklis), 2014 Sep 18 · Nikon D600, 50mm f/1.4 · 1/1250, f/4, ISO 400

This frame collapses four orders of surveillance. Three honor guards perform their ceremonial ritual at the base of the Freedom Monument. A woman in the foreground has stopped to watch them. Eric photographs the woman's watching. The viewer of the photograph becomes the fourth-order observer. National sovereignty is enacted by the marching bodies; personal attention by the woman whose stillness frames them; the act of photographing the witnessing expands each recognition — presence accumulating around a ritual that, for so long, was not allowed to continue at all.

The Freedom Monument in central Riga was commissioned by public donation in 1931 and unveiled in 1935: a granite, travertine, and copper obelisk topped by Milda, a female figure holding three stars for Latvia's three historical regions. Through fifty-one years of Soviet occupation the monument was somehow left standing — the regime around it could not absorb its island of symbolism. The honor-guard ceremony was discontinued under Soviet rule and reinstated when Latvia regained independence on August 21, 1991.

The Freedom Monument, Riga was one of the three photographs Eric Pan entered in the 6529 Network Museum's Keys and Gates inaugural accession program. The museum acquired one — Now Is Our Time (frame 4B), now in the permanent collection, liberated to cc0. This one stayed with the artist: 1 of 1, all rights reserved.

Provenance: this photograph was first minted on Tezos in 2020 as Act II: The Spectators, a frame of Foot of the Carpathians — the photo-roman accompanying Eric Pan's Travel Poems, Chapter 1. That token, never sold, was burned in July 2026; this is the work's single canonical edition, migrated chain to chain. One photograph, two romans: it lives in Foot of the Carpathians and as frame 1B of Keys and Gates.

A hand-signed print, #1/5 of its edition, is offered as physical gift alongside this unique token.

Keys and Gates, frame 1B.
The full 18-photograph essay: ericpan.org/keys-and-gates-essay
This photograph is © Eric Pan.