In 2015, the widow Tania Luckienė-Aldag of photographer Vitas Luckus (1943-1987) presented a part of the artist’s photographic archive to Šiauliai “Aušros” museum. The established new branch of the museum – Vitas Luckus’s Photography Centre – aims to actualize and to give a new impetus to artistic legacy of one of the most original authors of Lithuanian photography. In the exhibition “A Take on Vintage Photography” the works of thirteen Lithuanian and foreign authors of different generations, who used the vintage photographs for creation of new meanings, are presented.

The series of Vitas Luckus’s works called “A Take on Vintage Photography” (1969-1983) and the album with the same title (1987) can be undoubtedly ascribed to the most conceptual part of the artist’s creation. By aligning the images side by side, the artist did not pay attention to their different origins or time of creation, and in this way he created new meanings of images by placing the montages from vintage photographs.

The authors of the 21st century use the vintage images quite in another way. The artists collected vintage photographs from flea markets (Gytis Skudžinskas, Maurizio Anzeri, Vladislav Krasnoshchok), personal family albums (Dovilė Dagienė), virtual space (Pavel Maria Smejkal), other materials were collected purposefully and systematically from the state archives (Kęstutis Grigaliūnas, Indrė Šerpytytė). Some artists emphasize the context of photograph creation, others – the interface between the moment of photo taking and functioning of captured object in another, nowadays, time; other artists look for a thrilling sound in the sea of nameless images, which is later merged with their own ideas or in other ways try to bring back the importance for photographs which lost their primary function. Each author puts his/her own unique emphasis, and the images created in this way in different times, in different places and with different intentions start to communicate with each other.

The exhibition includes works from Photography Museum, Union of the Lithuanian Art Photographers, and artists’ personal archives.

Sponsor: Lithuanian Council for Culture, information sponsor – Lithuanian National Radio and Television.