International Photography Project Lithuania. 24 Hours
On May 1, 2004, Lithuania became a member of the European Union. This historic event inspired the international photography project Lithuania. 24 Hours, which brought together 63 photographers from Lithuania and abroad. In anticipation of this milestone, at the initiative of the news agency INNA, several dozen renowned international photography masters arrived in Lithuania. Together with Lithuanian photographic artists and several filming crews, they spent a full 24 hours capturing moments of daily life across the country, minute by minute, on the eve of Lithuania’s accession. The result is an authentic time document that reflects the flow of everyday life. In addition to the photographs taken that day, over 20 hours of video footage were recorded. The photographs were published in an album of the same title, and a documentary film was also produced.
The group of authors, assembled in 2004, included such artists as Antoine D'Agata (France), Stanley Greene (USA), Yann Arthus-Bertrand (France), Maher Attar (France), Jane Evelyn Atwood (USA), Bruno Barbey (France), Jacky Chapman (UK), Luc Choquer (France), Jon Santa Cruz (UK), Casper Dalhof (Denmark), Alexis Duclos (France), Martin Fejér (Hungary), Françoise Huguier (France), Jess Hurd (UK), Michael Lange (Denmark), Frederik Naumann (Norway), Christoph Otto (Germany), Patrizia Pulga (Italy), David Rose (UK), Rolf Schulten (Germany), Sion Touhig (UK), and Mirjam Wirtz (Switzerland). Representing Lithuania were Algimantas Aleksandravičius, Martynas Ambrazas, Aurelija Čepulinskaitė, Gintaras Česonis, Ramūnas Danisevičius, Petras Katauskas, Ramūnas Krupauskas, Aleksandras Macijauskas, Petras Malūkas, Aleksandras Ostašenkovas, Romualdas Požerskis, Romualdas Rakauskas, Artūras Valiauga, Vytautas Stanionis, and Antanas Sutkus.
This is an open, sincere, and at times ironic look at daily life in Lithuania — unmasked by festive ornament. All of the visual material was captured within a single day across various locations in the country, including the filming of this multilayered process itself. As the author of the project’s introductory publication once wrote, this was a day whose passing hours most of us will fully grasp only after a year, ten years, or even in 2054... In the future, this archive may serve as valuable material for anthropological or social research on Lithuania. This was that day: from April 30 to May 1, 2004. Time: from 6:00 AM to 6:00 AM. This is how we looked.
Those photographs capture a sense of waiting — the very essence of that moment in time. It’s something we may have known but not quite felt. Perhaps this project was one of the last opportunities to capture that particular state of being — and one in which it was truly necessary to do so.
In collaboration with the copyright holders, the Lithuanian Photographers Association created a dedicated website for this event. This initiative ensures the dissemination of the authors’ work, protects their copyrights and creative legacy, and documents the historical moment of Lithuania’s accession to the European Union.
The project is partially funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Copyright and Related Rights Protection Programme.
