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About Press photography
pressphoto.lt :: In English :: About Press photography
The most famous world press photo exhibition “World Press Photo” has celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The Lithuanian press photo exhibition and album “Lithuania in Action” – popular in Lithuania and already starting to reach beyond it – has marked its 5th anniversary. Whatever the differences, there also are some similarities too. Few of us still remember that in the Soviet times, two Lithuanian photographers – Irena Giedraitienė and Antanas Ališauskas – were among those who received “World Press Photo” awards. But then, the school of Lithuanian reportage – A. Sutkus, R.Rakauskas, A.Kunčius, A.Macijauskas, M.Baranauskas – took a turn towards fine art photography and have become its classics. Since the restoration of Independence, there has emerged a host of new newspapers and magazines. And new ones still keep being born. This has also brought about a change in the leading directions of photography. Alongside fine art photography – where one generation was being replaced by another, where the realistic aesthetics gave way to the post-modern – the Press Photographers’ Club was founded. It is now organising exhibitions and publishing the press photography yearbook “Lithuania in Action“ – a successful rival to the “Lithuanian Photography: Yesterday and Today”, the yearbook of the Union of the Lithuanian Art Photographers. Despite being such a tiny country, Lithuania boasts two annual photo publications of good substantial quality. Isn’t it a true phenomenon of photography? Neither of them has any problems concerning quantity; what stirs dispute, is quality.
The attitude of the jury for the last year’s “Lithuania in Action” was
extremely critical, even fierce – not enough good and original photos!
This year, the photographers exceeded themselves – there was a
cornucopia of photos spilling from the DVDs submitted. But it was not
often that the jury lingered at one or another photo. Rather, it was in
the theme category “Everyday life”, more often the jury just managed to
suppress a yawn in between the cries “No”. Strange, but it was just
recently that discussions focussed on banality and the aesthetics of
boredom in Lithuanian photography, while what we had there, were just
stereotypical moments and patterns of dull life. We felt quite relaxed
about the social photography and portraits. Nobody was expecting any
cardinal changes in the field of news, as the events in the Lithuania
of the period between elections are still the same – economic and
political scandals, privileges and greed of the bureaucracy, social and
moral grievances of people, and what is more – the main actors are
still the same. Nevertheless, Lithuania is changing, and there is hope
that the change will gain momentum. Even the fastest photojournalists
can hardly manage to be everywhere and with everybody, not mentioning
those several hundred thousand Lithuanians scattered in the world most
recently.
At home, it is not only that sensations seem to crowd each other, and a party follows a party. The lifestyle magazines leave nothing to be hidden from the nightlife of the new Lithuanian glitterati. We constantly keep inventing new anniversaries and holidays, and the public expects the photographer to have a sharp and ironic eye.
All the serious issues are being left for the reportage section. There were over a hundred of photos submitted, while only a few remained. Why? According to the West, the numbers of publications that focus on this genre (increasingly often called a “story”) are dwindling. Sad themes in quite a sad-looking genre: a child’s agony in hospital, the obscure future of the narrow railway line, fires. Indeed, Lithuania is rising, but it does not mean that the problems are less dramatic. The life is on fire! But it is not everywhere that we feel its heat. Even art photography can no longer be proud of being always able to feel the pulse of the countryside, though there were times when country folk used to be its main heroes. If it were not due to the last old men Algimantas and Mindaugas from Dzūkija in the photos of the Černiauskai, and the grimaces of the tired village in the series of Vikšraitis, the photographer from Suvalkija, we would hardly know much about how it was to move from the collective farm village back to farmsteads.
A real shock was the amount 
of work – from 5,000 to 10,000 photos – the jury had to deal with. It
looked like everybody would have welcomed a stricter normative
selection. But the increasingly numerous film festivals also abound in
youth films, eyes are swimming with new Lithuanian titles in book
fairs, and there are more and more new TV channels to choose from. We
are living at the times of new media and consumer society. Digital
technology is causing still another headache for photography with its
big advantage – speed and efficiency, and not an inconsiderable minus –
visual abundance and sclerosis of thought. Photojournalism has now a
rival – the so-called citizen journalism, as visual communication by
means of SMS, the internet or special news bulletins is at present a
feature of everyday life. As always in similar cases, foreigners have
again started talking about photojournalism having come to a fork in
the road. Enthusiasts don’t seem to be concerned – the spectator cannot
be satisfied with anything else but the truth. The more ways there are
to come close to it, the better. There is also a historical argument.
The more photo-documentary books we are issuing in Lithuania, the more
obvious is the importance of preserving photography – it is the
evidence of our time and the life of people for the future. The film
chronicle is difficult to expand – it takes a lot of money. Still it
manages to continue existing in Lithuania. Photographic chronicles,
despite their chaotic development, apart from one or two special
projects, e.g., the first day of Lithuania’s membership in the European
Union, by their sheer abundance alone still give us hope that some day
in the future we will be able to start issuing photochronicles “This
was Lithuania”.