Three-day creative workshop with photographer, artist, and VIKO lecturer Arturas Valiauga
The workshop will consist of a theoretical introduction and presentation of the author’s artistic practice, encouraging the exchange and sharing of ideas. It will also include group discussions, idea development, project planning, the creative process itself, and a presentation and reflection on the results.
The goal of this workshop is to develop practical skills in photography creation, to explore one’s own theme, and to purposefully make creative decisions while selecting means and methods of artistic expression.
Workshop theme:
Still Life Photography: The Tradition of Evolution and the Conceptual Expression of Visual Ideas
During the sessions, participants will analyze, discuss, and explore creative questions through practical work, reflecting on themes relevant to contemporary photography, such as:
Creating photographic storytelling using interactions and contexts of nature, the momentariness of time, and human social environment.
How can still life compositions serve as a conceptual expression of portraiture, landscape, the passage of time, light as drawing, natural phenomena, emotional experience, social commentary, or industrial/consumer culture?
Other practical questions relevant to participants may also be addressed.
Materials and equipment:
Ideas / insights / observations / examples of creative work / notes (if already available)
A camera or any other device capable of taking photographs, suitable and accessible to the participant, as well as a tripod. It is necessary to be able to view results during the workshop (participants using analog cameras are responsible for presenting their results).
Suitable tools for photo editing or preparation, if needed
Supplies for personal notes and sketches (comfortable for participants and accessible to viewers)
Computer / iPad / phone / prints / digital storage for your works
If needed, participants may work in pairs / groups / teams
Participants may bring objects/items that are no longer needed but were too valuable to discard
Number of participants: maximum 8–12
Arturas Valiauga was born in 1967 in Vilnius, where he continues to live and work. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Photographic Technology from the Vilnius College of Technologies and Design, and in 2010 earned a Master’s degree in Photography and Media Art from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. His creative work centres on themes of social identity and time.
Having started his career as a professional photographer, since 1993 Valiauga has been participating in photography art exhibitions and projects. Among them are international commissioned art projects such as the International Photography Research Network project “Work” (2005–2006), the 4th Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art (2008), and the EU–Japan Fest project “Japan Through European Eyes” No. 11 (2009), among others.
Since 1999, Valiauga has consistently explored themes of social and national identity through his photographic projects, documenting both the process and outcomes of transformation, and visually analyzing the concept of “home” in the broadest sense and its varied expressions. In series such as About the Land of Longing (2013), Between Shores (2008), Kupiškis Hangar (2008), Between History and the Present: The Karaites of Trakai and Daniliškės (2007), Silent Identity (2005–2006), I Dropped in on Stepas, We Talked About Life (2002), From a Life of Pancakes and Borscht (2002), and A Week Has Eight Days (1999), the artist observes people and their living environments, using the camera to record signs of identity in transitional states of time and place. The changing sociocultural situation and the condition of the individuals portrayed have become a unifying thread in the artist’s recent visual investigations.
Although Lithuania’s history and the experience of the Soviet period serve as a point of departure in all of Valiauga’s series and projects, his gaze toward the surrounding environment is not nostalgic; he does not seek echoes of the past in contemporary everyday life. On the contrary, he explores what has disappeared, what has changed, and why. The artist does not attempt to eliminate signs of the present from his photographs or conceal unromantic, neutral, mundane, or uncomfortable fragments of reality. For Valiauga, Lithuanian identity is important in the broader context of contemporary 21st-century Europe and the world. His work is marked by a conscious, open, and critical view of modernity, and by a fluid photographic form and expression that adapt to the specific aims of each project.
Self-portrait
