Aleksandras Dapkevičius (1929–2007). BASED ON THE REAL WORLD
Aleksandras Dapkevičius was a Klaipėda-based photographer of the senior generation who should be ranked among the classics of Lithuanian art photography.He was born in 1929 in Seda, Mažeikiai County. In 1957 he settled in Klaipėda, where he began to work as a photographer. The craft soon grew into a favourite creative activity, and since 1969 Dapkevičius’ photographs were increasingly often included in exhibitions. In 1973 he joined the Lithuanian Society of Photographic Art (renamed the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers after 1989 and most recently referring to itself as the Lithuanian Photographers Association), which gave a further impetus to his creative and exhibition activity. During more than 30 years he held over 20 solo exhibitions and actively participated in group exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad (most in the former Soviet Union republics), as well as won more than 50 awards. The most important of these was the Photographic Artist (AFIAP) distinction awarded to him by the Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique (FIAP) in 1999. Aleksandras Dapkevičius became the Honorary Member of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers the same year, and in 2005 obtained the official status of an Art Creator from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania. The author passed away in 2007 in Klaipėda. His major photography series are Little Samogitians (1968–1978), Nudes (1969–1991), Pamarys Landscapes (1972–1982), Portraits (1972–1989), and Photographics (2002–2007). The author’s creative legacy is preserved by the Lithuanian Photographers Association, Klaipėda County Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library, Lithuanian Art Museum, and in private collections. Three catalogues of his exhibitions have been published (in 2007, 1990, and 1985). An album of Aleksandras Dapkevičius’ photography works is planned to be published next year.
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Having taken shape during the heyday of the Lithuanian school of photography, Aleksandras Dapkevičius’ take on the photographic medium could hardly lay claim to objective reflection of reality. He never rushed to the whirlpool of current events, and preferred to work alone, focused and distanced from the chaotic social and political action. The author repeatedly opposed the reportage style which dominated Lithuanian photography at the time, and criticised his colleagues for the lack of psychological and philosophical insight in their works. He was an advocate of the well-crafted, premeditated, more or less staged shot, and left little space for chance. The author turned to his immediate environment in search of easily understandable non-analytical truth, usually negating the authenticity of the image through a subjective sensitive approach. Yet he never fully rejected the social focus. Like many of his peer photographers at the time, he was concerned with immortalising the vanishing Lithuanian villages, and often visited the newly rising districts of Klaipėda to capture the scenes from their settlers’ life. Still, the dominant part of the body of Dapkevičius’ work obviously deals with themes that are much less related to any kind of facts, and thus grant the author more space. One of such is nature. Aleksandras Dapkevičius maintained a very close connection with the latter throughout his life. Working in this genre, he crafted his creative manner to subtle perfection. The most lyrical and sensual nuances of the author’s work as well as his individual principles of the perception of beauty, harmony, and aesthetics reveal themselves most fully in this segment of his entire oeuvre. Another particularly prominent genre in Dapkevičius’ creative legacy is that of the nude. Here, the author did not diverge much from the other masters of his time. Like most of them, he was only interested in the young and naturally aesthetic female body. He usually photographed his models in outdoor natural settings, thus seeking to reveal and give meaning to the unity of the human being and nature. Meanwhile, the children as seen by Dapkevičius are completely different. The author always emphasised the importance of this theme in his photography. He appreciated it not for the visual quality determined by the formal means of expression, but rather for its content. It was also the sphere in which he sought authenticity, unlike elsewhere. The genuine childish sincerity, whether in joy or tears, creates forceful psychological portraits and opens up the most profound meanings of the photographs. In contrast to the author’s nudes or landscapes, these works display many more traits of the authentic moment and the reportage method.
Aleksandras Dapkevičius’ photographic expression was strongly enriched by his interest in creating montage pieces, a kind of fabrications of reality, which dated back to the 1960s. Already at that point the author was actively exploring the new creative possibilities offered by photography, which allowed for an even greater augmentation of reality, while after thirty years of working in the sphere of traditional photography he veered in an absolutely untypical aesthetic directions. The photographer began colouring his photographs with felt-tip pens, gouache, etc. This led to new works that had almost nothing in common with photography. The sketchiness and spontaneity typical of painting altered the thought-out composition of the photographic image beyond recognition. However, it would also be inaccurate to claim that the new imagery created on the base of a photograph loses any connection with photography. Aleksandras Dapkevičius based even his fictional universe on the real world, employing the shapes of objects suggested by reality and their mutual ties.
The creative legacy left by Aleksandras Dapkevičius is rich and diverse. The author was constantly experimenting, creating montages and collages, seeking new visual meanings through multiple exposure, and so on. However, regardless of the chosen means his work always displayed a clear effort to break through the ideological barriers and perceptual conventions of the time. While respecting tradition, he simultaneously sought new expressive possibilities, and it did not matter to him that they did not fit in the framework of photography. The work of Aleksandras Dapkevičius had a huge influence on the development of Klaipėda’s photography, and made a solid contribution to the history of Lithuanian photography at large.
Curator Danguolė Ruškienė
Translated by Jurij Dobriakov
