Every year, the Photaumnales festival showcases photographs from across the Hauts-de-France region. For this 21st edition, which runs from September 21st to December 31 2024, the theme is gourmet: ‘Festins! Photography at the table’.
In addition to this theme, and to celebrate the Lithuanian Season in France 2024, the festival has decided to honour its long-standing partner, the Kaunas Photo festival. Part of the programme is devoted to Lithuanian heritage and contemporary photography from across the region.
The heart of this tribute takes place at the Opale-Sud museum in Berck-sur-Mer, which hosts a slew of exhibitions mixing genres and eras. Dovilė Dagienė is exhibiting his series begun in 2015, whose evanescent works, linked to the organic world and plants, are an exploration of historical memory and oblivion, linked to the imaginary. Further on, Zenonas Boulgakovas transcends the dreary banality of Soviet Lithuania into poetic, humanist images in a visual chronicle of the town of Alytus that also reveals the photographer’s sociological and anthropological approach.
The humanist images of everyday life immortalised by photographers Tadas Kazakevičius and Artūras Morozovas are also part of the immense legacy left by the Lithuanian school of photography in the 20th century. The works of Domicėlė Tarabildienė, meanwhile, plunge us into independent Lithuania between the two world wars. A stunning imagery, where editing is a catalyst for the imagination while daring stagings allow her to embody different female roles.
The later series by Vytautas V. Stanionis’ series is a mirror of Lithuania at a pivotal moment in its history, in the early 2000s, when the country was about to join the European Union. While this forthcoming accession marked the start of an era of stability, many of the country’s inhabitants were keen to keep a record of life up to that point. Vytautas V. Stanionis travelled the country to immortalise this transition from the past to the future. His images are the first colour documentaries of Lithuania.
Imagination is also at the heart of Algis Griškevičius’s practice, as he transposes his dreams into the realm of reality, without going digital: ‘Because in order to photograph what you imagine, you have to make it real, which means defying the laws of physics, using the inventions of mankind, becoming an engineer. Cranes, ropes, heavy stones and human bodies, fine-tuning: all this is slow and probably tedious work, the aim of which is to capture the imagination as if it were reality’. These fantastic pictures can be seen at the Safran art centre in Amiens.
In the Parc Saint-Pierre, along the Canal de la Somme, visitors can meet the new generation, those born between 1995 and 2001, in the atmosphere of freedom that reigned in the wake of the country’s independence. The first generation of Lithuanians to study abroad, these digital and social-network-savvy young people are still very attached to their country of origin and its values. Photographer Elena Krukonytė, herself born in 1998, paints a fascinating portrait of this dual generation.
More informations :
