"In this exhibition, poet and photographer Alis Balbierius presents photographs from his analogue archive, capturing images of Užupis from 1994-2009. Why Užupis? According to the photographer, although he lived on the other side of Vilnius at the time, Užupis was like a kind of myth created by his friends. Užupis came to Balbierias and "entered" him through friends and artists he knew: the painter Zenonas Šteinis, a close friend who passed away too early, and the writers Jurgis Kunčinas and Antanas Ramonas, who is buried in the old Bernardinai Cemetery. Through the inimitable charismatic Prince Vildaugas - Stasys Urniežius, many other artists and people of this place, who met in the bohemian backstreets and who created the legend of Balbierius' Užupis, the myth of freedom of Užupis at the end of the Soviet era and at the beginning of the independence. The photographer was also fascinated by Užupis' mysteries and desolation, its ruins and expressive old architecture, the Bernardine Cemetery. It attracted him with its visuality, which, he said, was already clear at the time that it would one day disappear, be replaced or even destroyed. Balbierius wanted to capture and preserve, at least in photographs, the memory of this place. As the artist says: "These images of Užupis from 1994-2009 should not be searched for some kind of art - they are an urban documentary, where the inaccuracies of photography are filled in by the muted light of the past, which I hope gives them a liveliness and otherness, and resurrects the memory". (Art critic Agnė Taliūtė) The exhibition will be open at Vilnius City Hall (Didžioji str. 31) until 1 March.