Beyond the polished facades of Riga’s Old Town — with its Art Nouveau splendor and cobbled streets — lies another city. One less photographed, rarely spoken of, and often overlooked by the passing tourist gaze.

In Perle des Baltikums, Hübner turns his lens in 2013 toward the neglected margins of Latvia’s capital. Over the course of one week, he moved through neighborhoods shaped by poverty, addiction, and the quiet erosion of post-Soviet transition — places that exist in plain sight, yet remain largely unseen.

Moving through the city day and night, carrying an old camera loaded with black-and-white film, he met people far removed from Riga’s polished center: parents struggling to feed their children, young men drifting through dark streets, families sharing single-room apartments, a mother caring for her disabled daughter in a deteriorating building, and the empty room of someone who had quietly disappeared.

The project is not simply a record of urban neglect. It seeks moments of dignity in the margins and traces human lives unfolding behind closed doors and crumbling walls. Through encounters with those living at society’s edges — marked by hardship, yet often disarmingly open — the work reveals a fragile beauty beneath the surface. A pearl not defined by its shine, but by its depth.

Beyond the polished facades of Riga’s Old Town — with its Art Nouveau splendor and cobbled streets — lies another city. One less photographed, rarely spoken of, and often overlooked by the passing tourist gaze.

In Perle des Baltikums, Hübner turns his lens in 2013 toward the neglected margins of Latvia’s capital. Over the course of one week, he moved through neighborhoods shaped by poverty, addiction, and the quiet erosion of post-Soviet transition — places that exist in plain sight, yet remain largely unseen.