Antanina ir Kazys Lauciai: nerealizuotas modernizmas fotografijoje: karų karta

ENThis publications aims to rehabilitate the work of the leading interwar photographers Antanina and Kazys Lauciai, and at the same time to reflect on their – the generation of wars – drama of unrealized potential. The articles discusses the functioning of photography in the interwar period, appreciates the possibilities for a modern artistic medium and defines the historical circumstances that broke it off. On the basis of the criminal case from the Lithuanian Special Archive, the author managed to trace the fate of the photographer and partly that of his wife. K. Laucius was shot in 1942 in Sverdlovsk, and his wife was deported to the Altay region but her further fate is unknown. Their creative heritage has also vanished. The main field of creative activities of the husband and wife Lauciai, serving in the Lithuanian police, was photography. At the initiative of Laucius, a photographic section was established under the Lithuanian police sports club in 1932. The newspaper Police was copiously illustrated with the works of the best Lithuanian photographers, and it often published articles on the issues of photography theory and practice. Laucius was one of the co-founders and the most active members of the Lithuanian Association of Amateur Photographers, the author of a methodological publication and the first textbook for amateur photographers Everybody can Photograph (1937, 1938), the strategist of photography art in Lithuanian. The works by the Lauciai were displayed at exhibitions and published in the press.In the course of the first decade of independent Lithuania the most active were atelier and press photographers, who in 1926 founded the Society of Lithuanian Professional Photographers and reinforced the functioning of their guild. The photographic section established in 1935 under the Association of Lithuanian Land-Surveyors and Cultural Technicians developed ethnographic photography. The Lithuanian Association of Amateur Photographers (since 1936 – society) established in 1933 was concerned with the dispersion of photography art: it organized annual exhibitions and published catalogues. The new international photography and film monthly Gallery published in Lithuanian became a prestigious arena for photography artists. It familiarized the reader with the world perception and novelties of Western photographers, opened the world to Lithuanian photographers and together presented them. One of the most significant events in Lithuanian interwar photography was a joint exposition arranged by Kaunas – based photographers in 1940 – the first presentation in Vilnius and the last, seemingly summing up one of the stages of Lithuanian photography, exhibition. The photographers, whose purposeful creative activities began only in 1930s, lacked time to mature and articulate their ideas in a modern idiom, although it was the prewar period when favorable and real possibilities for perfection, original self-expression and new ideas emerged.