The fascination with aviation began when the first flying machines took to the air. Many children born in the 20th century in the second half, they still remember when their parents used to take them to the airport area on weekends to watch planes. Today, plane spotting is a much more complex phenomenon, accompanied by many "where?", "why?", "when?", "what?", "how?" and "wow".
The photographs of the "A-Spot" series were created in Auckland (New Zealand), Singapore, and around the airports of St. Martin, Istanbul, Vilnius, Riga, Warsaw, Berlin, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Toulouse, Basel, Lisbon, Zurich, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington and other cities.
Some A-Spot airports have special aircraft monitoring areas and built platforms. Visitors come to A-Spots to take pictures and mark aircraft registration numbers. There, the exciting sights and sounds of aviation combine with sports activities, snacking, children’s education, romantic encounters, even therapy. Some people go to these places to say goodbye to loved ones and watch their planes take off, while for others the movement of planes is a way to overcome homesickness. For the avid flight watcher, a visit to the A-spot of each airport you travel to can be like a pilgrimage.
The cycle "A-Spot" started in 2015, is about the phenomenon of plane spotting, and continues Mindaugas Kavaliauskas’ "travel'AIR" project exploring the human face of civil aviation.
Mindaugas Kavaliauskas is a photographer, exhibition curator, publisher, and photography teacher. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s studies in art history at Vytautas Didysis University, Kaunas (1996 and 2000). He studied photography at École nationale de la photographie (Arles, France, 1997-1998), École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (Paris, 1998), and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland, 2000-2001). Since 2004 till 2021, he has curated the Kaunas Photo festival. He has organised about 30 personal exhibitions, participated in more than 20 collective projects, and published four photo albums. The last one is “Views of Welcome to Lithuania”.
