Peržengiant akimirkos ribas : humanistinis pasaulėvaizdis Vilniaus šiokiadienių fotografijose

Abstract

Every photograph is directly linked to the specificreality that is captured in it. Inevitable relation between the image and the fragment of reality is determined by the photographic technology: the image captured in a photograph is formed by the light reflected by various surrounding objects. On the other hand, in many cases photography not only shows the momentary and fragmented image of reality, but also transmits to the viewer “additional” messages, related to social and cultural meanings rather than to material reality and thus not limited by the fragment of time and space captured in a photograph. Therefore, photography always transmits a twofold message: the denotative (the image of a specific reality) and con-notative (socially and culturally defined meaning). The interpretation of a photograph always transcends the limits of the visible information and this creates a premise for creating photography of broad metaphorical meaning. This possibility is fulfilled by the humanist trend in photography. Capturing the particular moments of life of or-dinary people it transcends these moments in terms of meaning and conveys generalized humanist worldview. Lithuanian authors, who underwent the influence of Western humanistic photography, created visual metaphors while capturing the moments of everyday life too. Antanas Sutkus and Romualdas Rakauskas expressed a seemingly universal humanist worldview and timeless virtues in the album Weekdays of Vilniuspublished in 1965. Moreover, the associations between the images, created by the designer of the album Rimtautas Gibavičius makes the links between the denotative and connotative messages of the photographs even more clearly visible. Thus, this album can be regarded as one of the earliest and most distinct examples of Lithuanian humanist photo-graphy and its tendency to create visual metaphors that transcend the limits of the moments of the real life.