Arturas Valiauga: I dropped in on Stepas, we talked about life (2002-2003)
An old lady and her middle-aged son live in a modestly furnished house. Some of the photos show the two of them at home, on the sofa, at the kitchen table, or on the edge of the bed. What was most important to the photographer was the relationship of the house’s inhabitants to their domicile, a space that they have formed themselves. For over ten years, they have been papering over the walls with colored and black-and-white clippings from newspapers and magazines, seemingly opening their doors to the world, albeit in a small format. This world of everyday images is supplemented by decorative candy-wrappers and white dots of paint on a closet door, giving rise to the feeling that they fear empty space. One could say that mother and son live in an archive of the present, consciously or unconsciously using images from the recent past to visualize the passage of time…
I Dropped in on Stepas, We Talked about Life:
could be regarded as the most precise reflection of our days: the inhabitants’ faces and postures are from the golden times of Lithuanian portrait photography; and the walls, colors and, finally, the choice and arrangement (i.e., overabundance) of clippings pasted instead of wallpapers convey the assault of the present day image and an attempt to make it more aesthetic, i.e., to control. This process is further continued by the frames of A.Valiauga’s shot. Everything is just an absolute concept of beauty: an artist who works in advertising makes press photographs.
- Anne