Sonata Žalneravičiūtė ‘Vilniaus iliuzionai: miesto kino teatro istorijos’ (‘Illusions of Vilnius’) (2015, Vaga)
The history of the cinemas of Vilnius is told through ‘Illusions of Vilnius’ – like an album of individual portraits: memories, letters, photographs, facsimiles, speculations, mockumentaries… Some are monumental and span decades, while others, which lasted only a year, are marked by just a few strokes.
Sonata Žalneravičiūtė „Vilniaus iliuzionai“
Algė Andriulytė English Version ‘Ferdynand Ruszczyc: Civis Vilnensis Sum’ (Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2022) Lithuanian version: ‘Ferdynandas Ruszczycas. Civis vilnensis sum’ (2018, Vilnius Lithuanian Academy of Arts Press).
The artistic activity of Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870-1936) in Vilnius is best described through his own words, spoken in 1919 at the meeting when Society of Lovers of Vilnius was established: “Civis vilnensis sum”, meaning: “I am a citizen of Vilnius”. Ruszczyc’s civic spirit manifested itself as a desire to “uplift and beautify the city”. It was at its best in the realisation of his various ideas: drawing or painting the city, designing book covers, designing theatrical sets, preserving the city’s heritage, organising events, or simply talking and writing about Vilnius in all its beauty, distinctiveness, and history.
Dainius Junevičius ‘Abdonas Korzonas – pirmasis Vilniaus vaizdų fotografas’ (‘Abdon Korzon – the first photographer of Vilnius images’ (2018, Vilnius Lithuanian Academy of Arts Press)
Abdon Korzon was a photographer who worked in Lithuania. Although Korzon’s studio in Vilnius was only open for a few years (1859-1863), it is important to us because he was the first in Lithuania to take photographs of the city and its surroundings around 1860.
This thoroughly researched biography is written in an interesting and engaging manner. In the book, the reader will see a gallery of portraits of people photographed by Korzon, the earliest photographs of Vilnius, and, with special glasses, the oldest 3D images of Lithuania. The book is richly illustrated with photographs, graphic art, documents, maps and plans, and facsimiles of archival documents.
Rasa Antanavičiūtė ‘Menas ir politika Vilniaus viešosiose erdvėse’ (‘Art and Politics in the Public Spaces of Vilnius’) (2019, Lapas)
The author consistently narrates the evolution of the symbolic marking of Vilnius’ public spaces from 1895 to 1953: from the late period of the Russian Empire to the Stalinist Soviet Union. Readers come across squares and monuments born out of different political motivations, revealing how successive governments imagined and shaped the city. The visual text is further enlivened by more than 150 archival photographs and postcards from the collections of institutions preserving memory in Lithuania and abroad that illustrate the changes in Vilnius. Some of the images in the book are published for the first time.
Jolanta Marcišauskytė – Jurašienė ‘Vilniaus skulptūrų kelias’ (‘The Path of Vilnius Sculptures’) (2017, Modernaus meno centras)
The book presents 157 sculptures in the Old Town, in the centre and further afield, and their creators, with a list of individual objects and sculpture parks. The updated cultural guide also includes the new ‘Talking Sculptures of Vilnius’ route.
Jolanta Marcišauskytė – Jurašienė „Vilniaus skulptūrų kelias”
Algimantas Kunčius ‘Fotorefleksijos: Vilnius. 1990-2019’ (‘Photoreflections: Vilnius. 1990-2019’) (2019, Artseria)
‘Photoreflections: Vilnius. 1990-2019’ is a collection of images of the city, revealing the change of two streets of Vilnius through the eyes of Algimantas Kunčius, an old-timer of the city, photographer, and a tireless explorer of images. It is a one-man flâneurie with a camera, covering several decades of the city’s metamorphoses and a guide to the transformations, and perhaps criminal evidence, of the two streets – Gedimino and Konstitucijos Avenues. The book contains more than three hundred black and white and colour photographs.
Compiled by Margarita Matulytė ‘Vilniaus romanas. Romaino Gary vilnietiško gyvenimo epizodai’ (‘Vilnius Novel. Episodes of Romain Gary’s Vilnius Life’) (2014, R. Paknio leidykla)
‘Vilnius Novel. Episodes of Romain Gary’s Vilnius Life’ is a publication dedicated to the centenary of the French writer Romain Gary (1914-1980), who was born and raised in Vilnius.
The special Vilnius atmosphere surrounding the writer in his childhood was truly multifaceted. Provincial habits were intertwined with modern experience: cars occasionally pulled up next to the woodpile, adventure or romantic cinema competed with the theatre of classical drama, and in the evening, Parisian hats replaced the soiled aprons of the day. Here, in this cosy world with aristocratic ambitions created by his mother on Didžioji Pohulianka (now Jono Basanavičiaus) Street, dreams were matured, and a plan for life was laid. After the collapse of his mother’s dream to raise a violinist of Heifetz level, a dancer not inferior to Nižinskis, and after abandoning the path of an artist, a career as a writer was finally chosen.
The memories, which are recreated by the writer’s vivid imagination in the novel ‘The Promise of Dawn’, are supplemented and ‘explained’ by the works of Lithuanian, Jewish, Polish and Russian artists from Vilnius – Gary’s contemporaries, as well as by documents, photographs, old printed materials, and the paraphernalia of the period.
Compiled by Margarita Matulytė ‘Czeslawo Miloszo Vilnius: tekstai ir fotografijos’ (‘Czesław Miłosz’s Vilnius: Texts and Photographs’) (2012, Apostrofa)
The collection of texts and photographs presents the city of Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004), the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, in a unique way.
In addition to the first-ever presentation to the Lithuanian reader of ‘Dykcyonarz Wilenskich Ulic’ (‘Dictionary of Vilnius Streets’) and the famous ‘Dialogue about Vilnius’ – the correspondence between Czesław Miłosz and Tomas Venclova – the publication includes photographs by Jerzy Hoppen, Bolesław and Edmund Zdanowski, Jan and Janusz Bułhak, and Algimantas Kunčius.
Samuel Bak ‘Painted in Words: A Memoir’ (2020, LGGRTC)
The book ‘Painted in Words: A Memoir’ (‘Nutapyta žodžiais. Vilniaus prisiminimai’ in Lithuanian) has been republished in a second expanded edition with a foreword by the writer and intellectual Amos Oz; the book also contains more than fifty colour illustrations.
Samuel Bak, born 12 August 1933 in Vilnius, is a renowned artist whose works are exhibited in museums around the world. In ‘Painted in Words: A Memoir’, he puts aside his paintbrushes and tells the stories of his life – as a child in the Vilnius ghetto, as a young man in European refugee camps, and as an artist coming of age in Israel, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. Lovingly creating dramatic, lyrical, epic and sometimes absurd characters pulsating with life, Bak uses portraits of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who have passed away.
Algirdas Šeškus’ Žaliasis tiltas’ (‘The Green Bridge’) (2009, Kitos knygos)
‘The Green Bridge’ is a book by Algirdas Šeškus, one of the first Lithuanian photography avant-gardists, in which the relationship with nature and the nature of people itself is revealed in a 30-year retrospective. It describes a momentary impression of the present, accompanied by a sequence of images and representations. The life of the Green Bridge is interwoven with the movement from the ballet scenes, and without being a scene from a performance, it tells the story of a street life imbued with culture. The ballet of the Green Bridge is like a veil for everything that happens in the novel. Like a stream of subconsciousness, the images flow over Vilnius and create the Vilnius of the 1970s-1980s, where man and his manifestations are valued. Here, thirty years later, the question is answered: ‘How does a man feel in the avant-garde? “
Vaida Keleras ‘Vilniaus užkampiai’ (‘The Secluded Nooks of Vilnius’) (2010, Kitos knygos)
Vilnius-based photographer Vaida Keleras (born in 1963 in Panevėžys) has been observing the city for many years. When she started her search for places that mattered to her a decade ago, she has always – perhaps subconsciously but obviously stubbornly – deviated from the well-trodden paths of her predecessors. The author is not interested in aestheticised cityscapes or in studying architecture as an artistic object. The photographer is also no stranger to the mission of creating, representing, romanticising or symbolically encoding the image of the capital. The documentation of everyday life does not become a priority in her work, nor does the act of self-realisation – when elements of reality are incorporated into a conceptual idea. And yet, her authorial trait and style are unique, as revealed in the photographs from Vilnius: Vaida is not a speaker but a listener. She ventures into remote corners to hear the echoes of dead courtyards, occasionally punctuated by the barking of a dog or the shouts of joy of a child. To listen to the mute moans of the residents who have already left, coming through the glass of closed windows. To catch the whispers of the wind whistling through the cracks in the city walls. To absorb the silence of dying time. Vaida penetrates the very core of the city – its memory reservoir. And perhaps the author is right when she says that there are neither listeners nor speakers in the world of ghosts. There are only the unmemorable silhouettes of people, traces of events, and echoes of smells and colours – like in a dream. Just appearing – and fading away.
Julius Keleras’ Vilniaus šaligatviai’ (‘The Pavements of Vilnius’) (2011, Kitos knygos)
Julius Keleras suggests looking underfoot – at the pavements that we walk on every day without actually seeing them. The pavements of Vilnius are unique – only here can you find such patterns of cracks, traces, leaks, reflections and snow. This book is not only about the silent, imperfect aesthetics of pavements but also about the thoughts of the people who walk on them, from various places in Lithuania and around the world, from different lives and experiences. After reading the book and the texts, you will no longer be able to walk on the pavements of Vilnius as you did yesterday or before.
