Lithuania

Arturas Valiauga

Biography

Lithuanian photographer Arturas Valiauga (b. 1967) lives and works in Vilnius, Lithuania. He graduated from Vilnius College of Technologies and Design with a degree in Photography Technology, and in 2010 he went on to gain a Masters degree in Photography and Media Art at Vilnius Art Academy. Since 1992 he has been a member of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers and in 2003 he established Fotoprojektai, the first studio of advertising photography in Lithuania.

He has worked as a professional advertising photographer and has been taking part in various projects and exhibitions since 1993. These projects include Work by International Photography and Research Network (2005-2006), 4th International photographic art triennial Ars Baltica, EU-Japan fest project European Eyes on Japan vol. 11 amongst others.

Valiauga’s work deals with themes of social identity and the passing of time.

He is represented by Eglė Deltuvaitė at Lithuanian organisation Culture Menu.

“To talk about life or eat a Super Big Mac layered with pulp fiction and people's destinies. Fast food...

Don't talk about life or just feel a part of it, to accept a stranger as one's very own, to stay honestly individual.

During ten years the walls covered with clips from newspapers and magazines as well as candy wrappers are between silence and talking. Home becomes the map of the inside and outside world.”

Arturas Valiauga

Not too long ago the Baltic Sea was a barrier separating East from West. Items with foreign writings thrown out of the sea on the East coast used to thrill the imagination with images of a western world of big opportunities. Today the crossing of the sea is available for everyone and it is a benefit of modern life.

Pictures created for the project can be separated in two categories – portraits and landscapes. Valiauga chooses to ignore the time or direction sequence of his travel photo documentation to create the feeling of a personal subjective experience, mood and feeling.

A landscape that is close to the sight and far in the memories, concealing the burial mounds of Nadruvians and Skalvians, emerged on the bones of Prussians, Lithuanians, Frenchmen, Germans, and Russians, defying any harmoniously balanced composition. The landscape of a place that is still fenced in, a Stalker zone that fills you with restlessness, by nature recognizable in treetop sunset, bright spring greenery, midsummer scents, sticky autumnal dirt in the road, and winter’s white silence. A land that has preserved the legend of Lithuania Minor and the memory of Kristijonas Donelaitis in the time cycle of The Seasons. The Land of Longing where the past is more persistent than the present.

Truth in these photographs is not what you can see, but what you can feel as you look.