On 30 May, 5.30PM exhibition “Kaunas in Photographs 2” opens at Kaunas Photography Gallery (Vilniaus g. 2). Exhibition is curated by Donatas Stankevicius.
The exhibition features photographs of Kaunas city from the 1970s onwards. Most of them were taken by members of the Kaunas branch of the Lithuanian Photographers’ Association and photographers close to this community. It is a significant visual collection, capturing the city over several decades – as a physical, cultural and emotional space.
“Kaunas in Photographs” is part of an ongoing series of exhibitions that aims to form a longer-term view of the city. It is an attempt to reconstruct not only the visual history of Kaunas, but also to reveal how photographic thinking about the city has evolved – from representational images to personal, intimate records, testifying to the diversity of the city’s everyday life, changes and forms of existence.
The second exhibition in the series is distinctive in that the photographs that dominated the representative publications of the city are replaced by more personal glimpses. Some authors strive for a flawless composition, while others simply capture change. From everyday street life to construction, from classic black-and-white photography to vibrant colour shots with a 90s aesthetic. These are photographs that evoke memory – recognisable to those who lived through them and intriguing to a younger generation as a visual document of time.
In addition to images that have become part of the history of Lithuanian photography, the exhibition also features long-unseen images from collective photographic initiatives, such as One Day in Kaunas (2001) and Lithuania 24 Hours (2004), in which Kaunas was captured in a broader national context, just before Lithuania’s accession to the European Union. These images take on added weight today, when we can look at them from a historical distance.
The third exhibition of the series (in 2026) will invite Kaunas residents to explore their personal archives and become creators of the city’s visual history. The organisers encourage us to think about the city as we see it now – and how we can capture it with today’s tools, even a smartphone. The photographs taken by the citizens will become the material for future exhibitions.
Participants in the exhibition include Aleksandras Macijauskas, Romualdas Rakauskas, Kazimieras Linkevičius, Romualdas Požerskis, Alexis Duclos, Jonas Petronis, Algirdas Kairys, Vytautas Pletkus, Mindaugas Kavaliauskas, Feliksas Kerpauskas, Jonas Daniūnas, Romas Juškelis, Evaldas Butkevičius, and others.
The exhibition will be open at Kaunas Photography Gallery until 29 June.
The exhibition is supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Kaunas City Municipality. The gallery is patroned by AON, the main sponsor is letsinvest.eu.