Portraits (ongoing since 2005) records the first generation of Lithuanian residents born after regaining the independence. In 2005, D. Žiūra travelled around Lithuania and photographed as well as filmed 428 children, mostly girls, who were from three to fifteen years old at the time. The pandemic postponed the artist’s initial idea to continue this project exactly fifteen years later, however, in 2021-22 he was able to successfully revisit 220 of his former models, who now live in eight different countries. This work particularly strengthens the connection between the long-term projects cultivated by D. Žiūra and such works as Paul Almond and Michael Apted’s TV series Up (Great Britain, begun in 1964) or Nicholas Nixon photograph series The Brown Sisters (USA, begun in 1974), in which the same people are observed for a few decades. However, the method applied by D. Žiūra is uniquely transdisciplinary, using both photography and moving image, completely abandoning narrative storytelling.

Darius Žiūra, studied painting at Vilnius Academy of Arts from 1991 to 1997, in 2017 he defended his doctoral thesis. In his work, he concentrates on long-term projects. Some of them develop over decades, taking on new forms over time. In summer 2018, he organised a culture and art festival Gustoniai Days of Art in Gustoniai village (Pasvalys district), where he presented his work Gustoniai ongoing for 18 years. The project Portraits was awarded the Jonas Dovydėnas scholarship in 2022.