Life Stays Out of Frame
In 2025, we published our fourth monograph, which should have been the first. The books compile photographs taken between 1975 and 2022. Different eras, different social systems – yet everything revolves around the human being and their fate on this small patch of land we call Lithuania. Romualdas Ozolas, speaking about our photographic work, said:
“[...] I think it's so complex because you speak about a person who lives with the land – whose hands bear the traces of soil under the nails, caught just after work, in a moment of stillness, having poured everything into that one action, ready for the next. That, I believe, is the power that affects us, regardless of what exactly you’re capturing as that recurring anxiety, the constant echo we hear: ‘Leave, leave, you’re not needed here,’ and the lingering doubt – are we really meant to go? I see your painful but firm answer to that doubt: no matter how much you may wish for our departure – we are not leaving. These are the words of the Černiauskas Brothers. [...]
Illustration: Agota Micienė from the village of Pusnė, 1978
Who are the Černiauskas Brothers?
There are no individual photographers named Algimantas Černiauskas or Mindaugas Černiauskas – only two brothers, ten years apart in age, who began photographing at the end of the 20th century. In our free time, we photographed rural Lithuanians, the countryside, and the Vilnius skyline with its towers emerging between 1975 and 1980. We were part of an informal circle of Lithuanian photographers working in photographic art. Our first official exhibition took place during the independence movement in 1988 at the Kaunas Photography Gallery. Our first book was published in 2009. Critics (T. Kuzmina and J. Kuzminas) have linked our Soviet-era photographic portraits to the anthropological photography tradition that took shape in interwar Lithuania. Our photographs are often accompanied by texts: people’s stories, personal reminiscences, poetic insights, and reflections.
In 1995, thanks to Algimantas’s initiative, the “Šalcinis” Art Gallery was founded in Merkinė, hosting a range of visual art and photography exhibitions. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Šalcinis newspaper and Dainava magazine. Together with his brother Mindaugas, he writes and publishes articles in various periodicals. In 2008, the brothers were awarded the Balys Buračas Prize by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, followed in 2009 by the Lithuanian Photographers Association's 40th Anniversary Gold Medal, and in 2011 by the Government Prize for Culture and Art. In 2018, Algimantas was awarded the National Jonas Basanavičius Prize together with Henrikas Gudavičius.
Algimantas Černiauskas (photo by Romas Sadauskas)
