Honest Soviet photo of Romualdas Pozherskis

The Lithuanian school of photography in the second half of the last century made a real revolution in the minds of a whole generation of photographers, becoming a breath of "fresh Baltic air" against the background of the total officialdom of Soviet photography.

Today we would like to introduce you to the works of one of the most popular Lithuanian photographers, Romualdas Pozherskis, whose personal exhibition opens this week at the Lumiere Brothers Moscow Center for Photography.

(Total 20 photos)

1. Old cities of Lithuania. Vilnius, 1976

Romualdas Pozherskis is one of the most famous representatives of the Lithuanian school of photography, winner of numerous prizes and awards. His works are in the collections of the most important museums in the world, and he himself is a professor at the Faculty of Arts at the Vytautas the Great University in Kaunas, where he teaches a course on the history and aesthetics of photography.

2. In the work of Pozherskis, several large-scale cycles of photographs stand out, each of which the author devotes many years of continuous work. Each cycle claims to be an exhaustive story about the chosen topic, in the center of which is invariably a person.

3. Kaunas, 1976

The photographer makes viewers look differently at the relationship between people. A person in them is real and harmonious, primarily because he is not torn out of the space of life.

4. Kaunas, 1976

5. Old cities of Lithuania. Klaipeda, 1976.

“Art is an opportunity to get closer to a person, and not just a beautiful picture or an artist’s uncontrolled self-expression,” says Pozherskis.

6. In contrast to the standard Soviet documentaries, often staged, where a person exists only as a photographed object, the photographer's work is always incredibly truthful.

7. Old cities of Lithuania. Vilnius, 1977.

Whoever the heroes of his works are - war veterans, a boy he met by chance or a cripple - they are always in harmony. And the point here is not only in the humanity and wisdom inherent in Pozherskis, but also in the desire to show a person as he really is.

8. Old cities of Lithuania. Kaunas, 1977

“The fact of real life is much more interesting for me than a spectacular abstract composition,” says the author.

9. Old cities of Lithuania. Vilnius, 1977.

10. Old cities of Lithuania. Vilnius, 1977.

11. Old cities of Lithuania. Klaipeda, 1982.

While working on the cycle "Old Towns of Lithuania" (1974-1982), the author set himself the most important task - to show the relationship between a person and a city in the genre of street photography, which was virtually absent in Lithuania and the entire Union in those years.

12. Old cities of Lithuania. Klaipeda, 1984.

13. Cycle "Children's hospitals" (1976-1982).

A distinctive feature of Pozherskis' work is the sincere sympathy and empathy that he feels for his heroes. In particular, to children who inhabit almost all of its cycles.

14. Children's hospitals. 1981

15. Children's hospitals. 1981

16. Laugaliai, 1984

The author is equally empathetic to the elderly, to whom the cycle "The Last Shelter" (1983-1990) is dedicated.

17. Nemenchin, 1983.

18. Berzoras, 1988

The cycle "Gardens of Memory" brings together photographs taken in Lithuanian cemeteries. In it, the photographer tries to answer the philosophical question: where is the boundary between the material and spiritual worlds?

19. Crixtonis, 1987

20. Laugaliai, 1985

By the way, as part of the exhibition, the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography will also host a creative meeting with the author, where you can personally communicate with the photographer and get his autograph.