Effect of reception on the field of Lithuanian art photography in 1987–1994

XX a. 9 deš. pradžioje Lietuvos fotografijos lauke išryškėjo dvi „nesusikalbančios“ frakcijos. Sovietų Sąjungoje ir už jos ribų išgarsėjusių fotomeno klasikų karta suvokė fotografiją kaip menišką realybės interpretaciją ir nepriėmė jaunosios kartos požiūrio į fotografiją kaip į procesą, kurį galima paversti performansu, reflektuoti, ardyti, perkonstruoti. Tiriant jų kūrybos recepciją, straipsnyje aiškinamasi, kaip menininkų ir menotyrininkų dėmesys ne tik padėjo įsitvirtinti fotomeno lauko atmestiems fotografams, bet ir integravo fotografiją į šiuolaikinio meno lauką bei tarptautinį kontekstą.At the beginning of the 1980s, two factions misunderstanding each other emerged in the field of Lithuanian art photography. The generation of photo artists, who had become famous in the Soviet Union and abroad, conceived photography as an artistic interpretation of reality and did not accept the young generation’s idea of photography as a process that may be turned into a performance, become reflexive, disrupted or reconstructed. The paper investigates the reception of works by Alfonsas Budvytis, Gintaras Zinkevičius, Alvydas Lukys, Gintautas Trimakas, Remigijus Treigys, Saulius Paukštys, Vidmantas Ilčiukas and Snieguolė Michelkevičiūtė trying to answer the following question: how has the attention of Lithuanian and foreign artists and art historians helped the young photographers to strengthen their position and to become integrated into the field of contemporary art and the international context? The analysis of documentation of group exhibitions that showcased the aforementioned photographers in 1987–1994 reveals that the discourse of recognition differed remarkably in Lithuania and abroad. In Lithuania, photographers still had to overcome the ideologically imposed Soviet view that photography was a document of reality. Thus, photographers attempted to emphasise the specific characteristics of the photographic medium, the ways it distanced the image from reality and the artificiality of art photography. The young generation of art historians to whom photography’s attachment to reality was no longer a problem read this formal language learning from their experience of modernist art. Meanwhile, foreign curators were interested in the manifestations of creative freedom under the conditions of political repressions and recognised them in the works of some young Lithuanian photographers. Critics who wrote about their exhibitions saw formal experimentation as a phenomenon of the past, thus they were more impressed with impersonal evidence of historical reality without apparent means of artistic expression. The work of Vytautas V. Stanionis who appropriated his father’s photos for Soviet passports seemed to conform to the method invented by Bernd and Hilla Becher, which was widespread by then as the dominating principle in photography. Thus, even though the work by Stanionis was older in terms of the time the passport photographs were taken and he did not understand the implications of his own action, it looked more up-to-date than the experiments of young photographers in the West. Yet the success of young photographers remained unnoticed in the field of art photography in Lithuania, which was still upholding the reportage method. Thus, Lithuanian photography "caught up" with the processes in the West, although it did not affect the institutionalised tradition of art photography at home