Locksmith Craft

Locksmith Craft is a photographic project documenting the mastery of crafting of very specific techniques: locksmith craft and garage gate design. Those are of main importance to some particular group of people who own an automobile and a garage. This practice was popular in Soviet times and contains particular expressions. This skill was important to make secure your garage with basic and minimal resources. It has some constrains as the lock should be hidden from thieves or protected of rainwater, and other subtle techniques.

Everyone with a car and garage had to possess those skills and maintain locks, hinges, straps, shoulders, and the whole set of garage doors. Some of those are masterpieces of craft, built in a minimalistic way, some garage keepers apply reuse and repurposing approaches, use materials from other sites, other artisans had created and mastered designs and added extra decorations, drawings.

Visiting such garage blocks in the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) was a flashback to old Soviet times with memories of such handcraftsmanship. This is a long tradition that is slowly vanishing. However, it has strong patterns and should be documented. This project comes from my Father, who continuously was maintaining and recrafting his own garage with strong love and fondness.