Southern Southeast Wind
What do I show in this exhibition? I show a “poster”. In its nature, for me, it is a declarative, closed form that accumulates spontaneous tensions inside the compositions of lines, colours and stains. It is easy to remember it, and it is dedicated to publicity. Its subtlety is in its toughness. The same as a tough and persistent man, who knows well what he wants and no matter how long he has been seeking his goal. At a first glance, it easily adapts to the circumstances, sometimes even vanishes from sight, with the reason not to give away its identity as a secret, that is not entirely known for itself, but it can be anticipated.
My photos, when I look at them, seem like a collage: like peculiar shreds, pieces, edges, fragments. It is a peculiar puzzle of states and recollections. Since the principle of a collage is one of the main compositional elements of a poster, I hope to put into a “poster” my own experiences of the photographic process that have been lasting for more than 20 years, the ones behind which I hide or show up myself. With the help of a “poster”, I can simply make an inventory of my creative potential of mediation and abstraction, depicting and naming its depths.
I allude to the collage vividness of a poster to close my childhood and adolescence spent in Šiauliai, essentially in the southern part, where the wind blows, where the grass is high, and where there are the fields of rye just after Architektų street up to the woods with violets, on the surfaces of photos….
I bought my first camera “Smena” when I was 16 years old. I attended a photo club with a physics teacher Vaclovas Jankus and took photos of various significant objects, memorable landscapes, usually during the journeys, which were organized by Zita Subačienė, a geography teacher, and later an educator. Carpathians, Crimea, Caucasus, Leningrad, Moscow, Nemunas delta, Kaliningrad, local history expeditions together with Patrimpo club and Antanas Martinaitis in the lead. The archaeological works of Lieporiai village cemetery together with eternal rest Birutė Salatkienė, the first short articles in the Šiauliai news editorial office, where later in summer I worked: I worked as a freelance correspondent, so I took photos for the articles myself. I liked this very much. To see in the newspaper a photo taken by me was more precious than the article itself, which was accompanied by a photo… This darkroom illuminated with red colour, smelling with photo developers and fixers was almost the only one good place to stay, such perfect loneliness with images taken from outside, when I think now about this…I used to spend many hours there, and I returned home with quite a number of photos, which, to be on the safe side, I dipped in a tub of my parent’s bathroom. And those black-and-white, wet-shiny surfaces were full magic thingness, a kind of ritual, from a negative to a photo, which I don’t perform anymore. Maybe that’s why now, taking photos in a “digital” mode, I capture this ritual elsewhere and everywhere. It’s important to me, without it I can’t imagine my photography about whatever it is.
P.S. Virginijus said that most people who come to Šiauliai, want to go by sea. I feel the sea, I always miss it.