March 19, 2026 – May 3, 2026 at the Photography Museum will exhibit John Angerson’s exhibition “On This Day”. The opening event for the exhibition will be on March 20, 2026 at 4:30 p.m.

John Angerson’s project On This Day, developed in collaboration with historian Professor Ian McBride, proposes a sustained engagement with Europe’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century past. Rather than reconstructing events through archival montage alone, Angerson returns physically to the sites where they unfolded. Each photograph is made on the anniversary of a specific event and at its exact location. This disciplined methodology establishes a precise temporal and spatial alignment, allowing the present moment to stand in measured relation to what occurred there before.

The work is structured through the deliberate pairing of contemporary images with rigorously researched archival material. Photographs, documents, and artefacts are not illustrative additions but integral components of the project’s framework. They anchor each present-day view within a verified context, lending the work an evidentiary dimension that situates it between documentary practice and critical historiography.

Angerson’s practice can be understood as socially and politically engaged photography. It addresses events that have shaped collective experience, some internationally recognised, others more closely embedded within British public life. For Lithuanian viewers, certain references may not be immediately legible, particularly those tied to specific moments in Great Britain’s political or social development. Yet the contextual structure provided by the artist, through dates, captions, archival pairings, and careful framing, enables the viewer to decode the significance of each site. The work does not depend solely on visual recognition; it invites research, reflection, and interpretative participation.

The structure of the project is deliberate and conceptually rigorous. Organised chronologically from January to December, it resembles a calendar. This, however, is not a calendar of celebration. Instead, it assembles events from different years that have had local, regional, or international consequences.

The annual sequence creates continuity across otherwise disparate moments, encouraging consideration of how memory accumulates and how conflict, reform, trauma, and transformation are inscribed into everyday environments.

In this way, On This Day functions not merely as documentation but as a reflection on remembrance itself. It foregrounds the tension between apparent continuity and rupture, between architectural stability and social change. By returning to these locations on their anniversaries, Angerson establishes a clear visual methodology that connects historical inquiry with contemporary photographic practice, offering a disciplined yet accessible engagement with Europe’s layered and often unsettled past.

Valentyn Odnoviun

Author's biography

John Angerson (b. 1969, Bristol, England) is a British photographer whose work explores the evolving language of documentary photography and the ways communities form, adapt, and change over time. He began his career in the early 1990s documenting the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the shifting political landscape of Eastern Europe. Since then, he has developed a series of long-form projects examining social, cultural, and political life in Britain and beyond. His work has been exhibited at major institutions in the UK and internationally.

His monograph Love, Power, Sacrifice (Dewi Lewis Publishing) is the result of two decades spent documenting the Jesus Army, offering a rare and intimate portrait of a fringe religious movement. More recently, his book English Journey (B&W Studio) retraced author J. B. Priestley’s 1930s journey across England, producing a contemporary photographic travelogue that reflects on globalisation, outsourcing, and the changing nature of work. The project was exhibited widely across the UK and Europe, and the book has been distributed internationally. Alongside his personal projects, Angerson teaches at several universities and undertakes editorial and commissioned work for magazines, charities, and design agencies.

Exhibition curator – Valentyn Odnoviun

Organiser – The branch of the Šiauliai Aušra Museum – the Photography Museum