Lithuanian photographer Arturas Valiauga has been named the recipient of the 2025 Overseas Photographer Award at the prestigious Higashikawa International Photo Festival in Japan. The award, presented annually by the town of Higashikawa — often called the “Town of Photography” — honors outstanding contributions to the art of photography by international artists.

Valiauga was selected by a panel of eight Japanese photography experts from a pool of over thirty photographers recommended by Lithuanian photography professionals to the festival’s curator. The decision was strongly influenced by Valiauga’s long-standing exploration of identity and the complexities of personal and collective memory in post-Soviet Lithuania. His 2013 photobook About the Land of Longing (Apie ilgesio žemę) was cited as a central reason for the jury’s choice.

“I am honored to have received the Overseas Photographer Award from Higashikawa, the Town of Photography,” said Valiauga. “Although Japan is far from my homeland, it is a place that feels very close to my heart.”

 

In his artistic statement, Valiauga describes photography as a journey and a key to other realities: “It is a way to look into the lives of others, to tame them, to experience them as if they were your own memories. In photographs, time remains as a result of the interaction between a person and their environment.”

Born in 1967 in Vilnius, where he continues to live and work, Valiauga studied photographic technology at Vilnius College of Technology and Design and later earned a master’s degree in photography and media art from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2010. Since the late 1990s, he has developed a deeply reflective body of work addressing themes of social identity, historical transition, and cultural memory — always resisting nostalgia or sentimentality.

Valiauga’s solo exhibitions include Still Identity at the National Art Museum in Vilnius (2006), the Museum of Photography in Šiauliai (2007), and the Goethe-Institut in Rotterdam (2008); Between the Shores at the Contemporary Art Center in Gdańsk and Kaunas Photography Gallery (2008); and In Trust: Reframing Wales' Stories at Turner House Gallery in Wales (2016). His works are part of collections at the National Museum and MO Museum in Lithuania, the Modern Art Center, Leiden University Library in the Netherlands, University of Sunderland in the UK, and the Imago Mundi Collection in Italy.

Since its inception in 1985, the Higashikawa Photo Festival has recognized both Japanese and international photographers with substantial awards, solo exhibitions, and acquisitions into its permanent collection. Previous recipients include globally recognized figures such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Nobuyoshi Araki, Rinko Kawauchi, Lucien Clergue, Antoine D’Agata, and Michel Campeau.

Valiauga’s award adds yet another, exceptional honor to Lithuania’s strong tradition of photography and visual storytelling.

“Truth in photographs is not what you can see, but what you can feel as you look,” says Valiauga. “The context that the image reveals becomes more important than the image.”

Arturas Valiauga. From the series "About the Land of Longing"