The work of photographer Arūnas Baltėnas has been capturing the passing of time for more than three decades. His photography is bright and positive, sometimes with a nostalgic and sentimental beauty. One of the main themes is time and the changes, the scrolling, the moments of a stopped city. Baltėnas' photographs are characterised by the versatility of their motifs - not only architecture, but also photographs of people, portraits, the ever-changing environment and the history associated with it.
The artist's attention to the authentically Lithuanian homestead essay has been evident in the creation of the series "Namų tyloje" (In the silence of the house). In his new series "The Story of a Samogitian Family", A. Baltėnas presents photographs taken over the last 15 years, where he tells the story of one family's life with great care and sensitivity.
"Since 2009, I have been taking photographs of the Kimčiai family living in a remote farmhouse in the Mažeikiai district. When I first started photography, the family consisted of a husband, wife, two daughters, a son and the husband's mother. Currently the husband and wife live in the homestead, the mother died a few years ago, the eldest daughter is married with three children and lives nearby, and the youngest daughter got married this spring.
Over the years I have been photographing this family's daily activities in all seasons, celebrations (weddings, christenings, Easter), funerals. They live in a 19th century barn, they have a lot of livestock and poultry, and they work about 50 hectares of land. Their relationship is particularly close, and despite the hard work, illnesses and other hardships, the household gets along well and trusts each other. " - says Arūnas Baltėnas.
A. Baltėnas graduated from Vilnius University in 1979, and from 1984 to 1994 he worked in the group of the Inventory of Lithuanian Art Monuments. In 1980 he became a member of the Lithuanian Photographers' Union and holds various exhibitions of his work every year. Since 1995 A. Baltėnas has been the art director of Raimonds Paknis Publishing House.
One of the artist's most famous works is the series of photographs "Refuges", which commemorates the workshops of the artists who created them. Almost all of these interiors no longer exist today, their traces remain only in photographs. The author has also spent a lot of time photographing various Lithuanian and world cities. These works are included in the photographic cycles "Old Vilnius", "Venice Always", "St. Petersburg. Without Choice", "City Longing". In 2009, A. Baltėnas started to record the lives of socially disadvantaged families, and later he also captured the lives of people with congenital mental disabilities and their relatives. In 2015, Baltėnas was awarded the Government Culture and Art Prize. The artist's photographs have been exhibited in numerous galleries abroad and in this country, and his works have been acquired by the National Museum of Lithuania, the National Museum of Art of M.K. Čiurlionis, the MO Museum, the French National Library in Paris, as well as by many private individuals in Lithuania, Poland, France, Russia, Sweden, the USA and elsewhere.
The Lithuanian Photographers' Union's activities are financed by the Lithuanian Council of Culture.
