instagram
facebook

Polycopies reçoit
le soutien de:









nos partenaires:








KAUNAS GALLERY BOOKS

'School is My Home' - Virgilijus Šonta
Kaunas Photo Gallery, 2018

Virgilijus Šonta’s (1952-1992) series introduced in the publication ‘The School Is My Home’ was created in the schools for special needs children in the period 1980 to 1983. These photographs were first introduced to the public during the 1983 contest “Gintaro kraštas” for the Baltic countries in Šiauliai. Virgilijus Šonta was awarded the main prize. However, the representatives from Moscow did not approve the series that depicted topics inconvenient to the political regime of the time. A courageous move by Šonta to make sensitive topics that were concealed in the society public cemented his position as a persistent, rebellious artist who refused to play by the rules of others.
Adam Mazur writes: Šonta spent three years photographing the life of a boarding school for children with special needs. He is with them in morning, as they make their sleepy way to wash in a sordid bathroom. He is with them over the course of the day, as they sit at their desks learning geography, their eyes fixed on a teacher standing in front of a huge map of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the portrait of Lenin which hangs above it. <…> He is there as they get ready for bed, walking along windowsills, nudging, jostling and hugging as a sign of friendship. He is there in the spring, as the apple trees blossom and the children gaze up at the sky and the sun peeping out from behind the clouds. <…> The power of this material lies in the frankly relentless contrast it sets up between the innocence of childhood and the realities of the special needs school. At the same time, to a lesser extent, it is about highlighting the absurd clash of ‘abnormal’ children with the ‘normal’ world of a totalitarian state.

For more information:
https://shop.kaunasgallery.lt/en/product/virgilijus-sonta-school-is-my-home/
20% discount during the fair – code: POLYCOVID2020




'The Ghetto Lane in Wilna' - Moshé Raviv – Vorobeichic (Moï Ver)
Kaunas Photography Gallery, 2019

‘The small photography book The Ghetto Lane in Wilna, which was published in Zurich and Leipzig in 1931 in four languages, has long been known as a collector’s item, shrouded in legend and vague assumptions. It was regarded by scholars of photography, Judaic studies and Vilnius’ history as an exclusive publication, in which the Jerusalem of Lithuania was the subject of an avant-garde experiment. That experiment in photographic art was done with a great knowledge of technique, paying close attention to the peculiar atmosphere of the city, and with an ironic but warm look. It examines the heart of Jewish Vilnius.’
Mindaugas Kvietkauskas

For more information:
https://shop.kaunasgallery.lt/en/product/moshe-raviv-vorobeichic-moi-ver-the-ghetto-lane-in-wilna/
20% discount during the fair – code: POLYCOVID2020




'Crisis of History' - Joan Fontcuberta
Kaunas Photography Gallery, 2020

In addition to his well-known work as an artist, Joan Fontcuberta is an art historian, curator, and educator whose work has long challenged widely held ideas about photography and history. This book presents three of the important research projects he has undertaken over the course of his lengthy career, each of which includes previously unknown photographs that require us to re-think and expand the standard histories of photography. 
The Artist and the Photographreveals the role of photography in modernist art, showing photographic sketches by Spain’s best-known twentieth century painters Picasso, Miró and Dalí, offering new insights into both painting and the nature of photography.
Trepat: A Case Study in Avant-Garde Photographyexamines the results of a 1930’s project to document a Spanish factory by such luminaries as Walker Evans, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Moholy-Nagy, Charles Sheeler and Man Ray. This project embraces the seminal photographic movements of the 20th century, from documentary, to Futurism, Neue Sachlichkeit, and Surrealism, but contains images we have never seen before.
X.B. resurrects the forgotten oeuvre of Ximo Berenguer (1947-1978), a young street photographer little known at the time of his premature death, whose recently rediscovered work captured the energy and grit of Spain in the 70s, at the end of the Franco era.
By showing us examples of art, industrial documentation and photojournalism, Fontcuberta demonstrates the fluidity, ambiguity and wide reach of photographs, as well as the differences between history, knowledge and what happened.

For more information:
https://shop.kaunasgallery.lt/en/product/joan-fontcuberta-crisis-of-history/
20% discount during the fair – code: POLYCOVID2020