The 50th anniversary of the Lithuanian Photographers Association is a perfect occasion for us to talk with those who contributed to its establishment and development. This is our conversation with the photographer Virgilijus Juodakis about the prehistory of the Society and the notable events in the history of Lithuanian photography.

 

You went to music school, then you studied cello, and you even played in Vilnius Filarmonic Orchestra. What drew you into photography?

 

There was indeed a time when I was a musician, I played cello and studied in the Conservatory (curr. Academy of Theatre and Music). This lasted until the mid-winter of 1957, when the lecturer of political economy Sara Ginaitė-Rubinsonienė denounced me to KGB. I was arrested and accused of having an ‘anti-soviet attitude’. I got sentenced and sent to a Mordovian labour camp. Upon my return, I found that I was prohibited from living in Vilnius or any other major city in Lithuania. However, thanks to my acquaintances and good friends (my ex-classmate Adauktas Marcinkevičius, assoc. prof. Jonas Bulota, and the journalist Viktoras Liubomiras Žeimantas) helped me to cling on to Vilnius illegally. Thanks to these people and my skills as an amateur photographer, I managed to get a job at the Committee for Nature Protection ran by Viktoras Bergas, a truly wonderful person. My job was to photograph the beauty of Lithuanian nature, and my photos were used as illustrations for the scholarly applications toward establishing natural parks, reservations, memorials, and protecting rare plants, birds, and other animals, as well as their habitats, colonies, rookeries, and spawning grounds. At that time, my work was still a novelty, so some regional newspapers and magazines were eager to use my services. I was particularly happy when, thanks to the help of the journalists Rimantas Budrys and Vytautas Misevičius, I made it to the pages of Švyturys, a magazine that was considered prestigious at that time.

 

I was soon dragged to Vilnius University where I took up journalism and successfully graduated two years later. My dissertation was on the nooks and crannies of photojournalism. I then decided to try myself out in television, a newly formed industry in Lithuania. I gave Vilnius Television a go, but I didn't like it there. I then got a job in the Moksleivis magazine, first as a photographer and later as an editor of popular science section. My bosses were Antanas Drilinga, Vytautas Bubnys, and Antanas Zurba, all senior editors there. However even in this job I kept thinking about the research question I left unanswered in my dissertation, namely: who was the first to start photographing animals in Lithuania? As I kept searching for the answer in the libraries and museums, I inadvertently gathered a fair amount of material on Lithuanian photographers and realised that this research area was rather underexplored. I was particularly interested in finding everything I could about the Lithuanian pioneers in this field. What were their innovations and discoveries? In a country teeming with the foreign occupants, was primarily focused on Lithuanian theme.

 

Once, while working in Martynas Mažvydas Library, I bumped into my former tutor assoc. prof. Sigitas Makauskas. We began talking about things. He assured me that this was a great topic for a dissertation. He also gave me some advice on data gathering and cataloging. Since then he was constantly encouraging me to keep looking for the historical data on Lithuanian photography.

 

Then the Vilnius University Journalism department got transferred from the faculty of Philology to the faculty of History. They urgently needed someone to tell students about the history of radio, television, and photography. At that time assoc. prof. S. Makauskas was chairing the Journalism department. It was his decision to appoint me as an expert in these areas of journalism. I immediately agreed. I somehow managed to keep the convincing appearance of a pundit in all these areas. The students were great, they didn't protest against my stunt as an expert. However it did not last long. Radio and television got taken away from me and I had to stick to photography.

 

Leaving the magazine and becoming a lecturer was both exciting and scary. It took some serious consideration because the wages were much smaller. However, I realised that after finishing my doctorate I would compensate for this disadvantage. They say 'no pain, no gain', so I took a risk. This was how I ended up in the Journalism department at the Vilnius University. I worked there since 1970 until my pension. All these years I was involved in photography. As a matter of fact, I should say photojournalism.

 

You are regarded as a pioneer historian of Lithuanian photography.

 

Indeed. I happened to walk down the untrodden path. My work has been both praised and criticised. For instance, some say that my work is incomplete, that I have overlooked some clock maker Protazas who was doing post-mortem photography in the town of Pabarai. There is always some amateur historian of photography who claims things like that. Surely my monograph (The History of Lithuanian Photography: 1854--1940, 1995) has some holes. The first pancake is always a little bit burnt. But things start improving with persistent work. So everyone is welcome to join in and patch the holes I might have left in my research. I’ll be very grateful to all the contributors. Who knows, maybe one happy day we'll have a complete edition of an entire history of Lithuanian photography. That would be fantastic! There are millions of topics out there. All this can drown into oblivion if we won't use the chance to research them, especially while the witnesses of the period are still alive. Many asked me why don't I do this myself. I've heard this from the Association itself many times. But they wanted it to be a research on photographic art exclusively. I couldn't agree with analysing only one branch of an otherwise huge tree. Especially when Lithuanian photographic art with its various aspects have been analysed by many professional researchers from our neighbouring countries.

 

Could you tell us more about the prehistory of the Society? Did you have any support from the representatives of other disciplines?

 

There are always some rumbling noises that anticipate a volcano eruption. This is also true in our social life, particularly when the situation is ripe and the changes are ready to occur. In fact, personally, I had nothing to do with all this. It was all thanks to the work of other people. Algimantas Kunčius was one such example. At that time, he worked in the Kultūros barai magazine, so he had many contacts, both small and big, in the world of art. There were rumours that he sometimes even forced people to publish his demands to establish an organisation for the enthusiasts of photographic art.

 

Of course, there were others who were tolling the bells as well. Many people kept insisting that we needed to organise into a singular entity. There were several photography clubs in Vilnius at that time. The Republican Trade Union Photography Club (established in 1967 by Algirdas Tarvydas and Audrius Zavadskis) was the most active one. Moscow kept encouraging the Journalist Trade Union Section of Photography (ran by Adauktas Marcinkevičius) to be be more active with exhibitions; meanwhile in Šiauliai we had Antanas Dilys, in Panevėžys--Lionginas Skrebė, in Marijampolė (former Kapsukas)--Romualdas Pačėsa and Vytautas Žukauskas, in Klaipėda--Vaclovas Straukas, and in Kaunas--Aleksandras Macijauskas, Povilas Karpavičius and Vilius Jasinevičius. Meanwhile Antanas Sutkus was doing his best to spread an idea about the photographic organisation in Vilnius. Kaunas was particularly active. They managed to collaborate with Riga and take part in many exhibitions abroad. Actually, they even won quite a few awards there. It was them who started introducing Lithuanian photography to the world and putting the country on a map. Without a doubt, they might have succeeded in establishing a country-wide organisation themselves if they weren’t beaten by Sutkus. Remember those world power and strength championships where we kept seeing Žydrūnas Savickas pulling those gigantic trucks? This also illustrates how Sutkus was pushing forward the idea of the Society. Particularly after that fateful evening when a circle of friends of photography signed an agreement that the burden of establishing this unique creative formation falls on Sutkus' shoulders. He kept pushing this idea everywhere he could until he finally got the official permit and the Society of Photographic Ar of the Lithuanian SSR finally got established in 1969. He wanted to get the title of an Association, but Society was the only available option at that time. The organisation sparked envy across the whole Soviet Union—from Lake Ladoga to Caucasus, from Nemunas to Sakhalin.

 

Were photographers friendly to each other?

 

There were good things, and there were bad things. Not every news is received with the same enthusiasm.

 

I have heard rumours that the Museum of Photography was a result of your close collaborated with Antanas Dilys.

 

I am aware of those rumours. But these are rumours, nothing more. Me and Dilys have known each other as photographers for quite some time. He worked in ELTA, the news agency, and me—in the Committee of Natural Preservation. He was based in Šiauliai, me—in Vilnius. We would meet occasionally in various places. We had some overlapping interests: he was a hunter and an avid collector of antique photographic equipment, while I was gathering information about the history of Lithuanian photography. We would always eagerly share bits of interesting photography-related news we'd happen to stumble upon. We'd often follow each other's recommendations. This was a normal exchange of discoveries, news, and disappointments between a couple of 'crazy aficionados'. Gradually my drawers became too small for all the notes, drafts, memoirs and other material that kept piling up. Meanwhile the small room of Dilys' family flat also became too small for the things he's been amassing. The future material for the museum was everywhere: carefully wrapped and documented, packed into the shelves and drawers, lying under the tables and beds.

 

Dilys managed to turn his great dream into reality: Šiauliai Museum of Photography opened its doors in 1973. In 1976 it became part of Šiauliai "Aušros" Museum. During the period before this merger, Dilys was a chair of this charity-based public establishment. I repeat: it was charity-based. It meant that he worked there without funding, without wages, and without any governmental support. When the time came and Dilys' charity-based museum got nationalised and joined a governmental network of museums, the museum founder himself was left behind. Nobody bothered to offer him a position, not even that of a night guard. He was, as they say, discarded. Just like in the Shakespeare's "Othello"—the Moor did his job, now he can go. Despite all that, nobody heard even a slightest complaint from Dilys. He got himself a new hobby instead—collecting Lithuanian postcards. He even managed to transfer his passion to his son. In 2000, he organised the conference "The Origins of Lithuanian Postcards", which was first of its kind. It was followed by the conference "The Heritage and Classification of Lithuanian Postcards" in 2001. In the same year he gave his collection of over 60,000 postcards and 45,000 negatives to Šiauliai "Aušros" Museum. In 2004 he received the Peliksas Bugailiškis Award for his achievements in philately and his philantropic work.

 

What would be your wishes for the Association today?

 

I wish it to accomplish everything that we didn't accomplish over those last 50 years. For example, today we still don't know where photography stops being mere reproduction and art begins. Where is this border? How can it be measured? And, more importantly, when one is able to call themselves an artist photographer? What would be those simple parameters that would allow a robot to clearly categorise a pile of photos into art, non-art, and almost-art? What and when gives a photographer the right to consider themself an artist? Is it enough to have an 'exhibition' with three works hung in a block house hall or a cafe? Or, perhaps, I am an artist because my friend said so in Vakarinės naujienos daily?