Evening on fire

Road from Kelmė to Kražiai, Lithuania. 2001

This picture is a 10 years old, taken in the end of September t0 Mid-October, 2001, during a trial trip to Kražiai. A large number of subsequent trips  resulted in what happend to stand as “Portrait of Kražiai” . This series of photographs, often shown in exhibitions internationally was culminated by the publication of a book in the end of 2009. The very first trip to Kražiai did not bring me anything that would make a huge impact on the future project. Nonetheless, it is interesting to look back and find several colour images like this, taken on panoramic camera. This scan itslelf is also quite “retro” in its quality…
Soon after this trip I refused using the panoramic format, and the images started featuring a lot more “down-to-earth” subjects. It is nice to remember trial shots like this, resulting in something important growing out of the beginning.

This particular image was the last one I took of the evening of the first visit. My eyes were cought by a number of fires, that seemed to be a nice methaphor of the sufferings of the people of Kražiai, and, above all, of the historic transition from pagal culture to Christianity, the decisive mile stone of which was placed in Kražiai. What I kept from this trial tip, is the usage of colour photography for the rest of the project of “Portrait of Kražiai“.

See more images from “Portrait of Kražiai”