Romualdas Požerskis on exhibit

by Tom Gregg (Grigonis)

Eons ago in his prime he depicted the country’s elite, including Arvydas Sabonis senior, Valdas Adamkus, Jonas Mekas and Vytautas Landsbergis. He chronicled demonstrations in Kaunas following Romas Kalanta’s self-immolation in 1972. For this he was arrested, sentenced to 15 days in jail, and expelled (temporarily) from college. On Bloody Sunday in the capital in 1991 he crawled through a bathroom window to enter a barricaded and besieged Seimas Building to film images later seen worldwide. He escaped injury daring fate with those latter acts, but there’s no escaping the world passing us all by eventually. The personal and cultural sands shift beneath us. But if you’re lucky enough to have ranked with the elite in some high visibility field, you may ultimately be recalled as an important historical public figure. 

So it is in Lithuanian photography, and today 70 year old Lithuanian icon Romualdas Požerskis is guaranteed a high place in national memory. A summary of honors and distinctions runs to a full page. He’s published sixteen books, the first in 1987 towards the end of Soviet occupation, and the last in 2020. All are theme-based collections of his still photographs chronicling post-1950s life and evidencing a degree of art regardless of subject. Some of these same photographs now appear in framed museum collections internationally, from Moscow to Stockholm to Paris to the university town of Chapel Hill in America. This is exceptional critical buy-in as is the award he’s proudest of, the prestigious Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts presented to him in 1990. He was the first photographer to win.

 

 

Those elements of his legacy appear online along with numerous photo samples and dozens of interviews granted in the second independence era. Even given the limitations of Google translate Požerskis sounds eloquent and open too in discussing both past and present. Perhaps the MO Vilnius Art Museum web site provides the clearest look at stage-setting developments which preceded him. The Lithuania of his youth was an occupied country, they write, run by a totalitarian regime. The interests of the rulers came first. And it was worrisome to allow the ruled to own cameras, even the second rate replicas of German Leicas flooding the LSSR after the war. Embarrassing images could poorly reflect on the state.

But outweighing that risk was a need for propaganda to extol the glories of the system, such as they were, in Soviet media. And in the post World War II era of Stalin there was a severe shortage of photojournalists. Casualties of war, one assumes. Amateur photography clubs sprang up and classes were initiated to allow enthusiasts to advance to a skill level enabling them to submit serviceable pics to the papers. Clubs and classes would spread border to border as photography interest accelerated in the somewhat more tolerant Khrushchev years. In this, the Lithuanian SSR was well ahead of the rest of the Soviet republics.

Censorship still loomed, of course, more heavily applied than anyone in the free West could imagine. It would remain until the USSR’s end and color many Požerskis interviews later. Some of Romualdas’s photos were suppressed for years until the nineties, perfectly benign works by free world standards. Limited Soviet cooperation was a start though, an opportunity to develop a craft forever inching from sanctioned photojournalism to a legitimate art form recognized internationally.

Rising to the top of the Lithuanian photographer community in the early sixties was a group united by an interest and talent. Požerskis would later single out three for praise as future mentors. Antanas Sutkus, regular Lithuanian Heritage contributor in later years, was the leader. He had the ear of the all-powerful Soviet central committee, and as a gifted diplomat would later intercede with them at least once on Požerskis’ behalf. Work-wise, pensive child portraits were his specialty, pursued as a part of his lifelong “People of Lithuania” chronicle. Romualdas Rakauskas, later to co-author one of P’s books, shot sensational while unobjectionable rural scenes. Aleksandras Macijauskas’ depictions of farm life were edgier, destined not to see homeland daylight until 1993. With motorcycling fan Požerskis already showing promise as a younga dult in the early seventies, it was Alek who suggested he do a series on motocross events.

 

 

All three possessed an ability to produce photographs that no one seemed to have taken before – anywhere. And they weren’t the only capable hands, Lithuanians were flocking to photography and demonstrating an aptitude. This encouraged the Soviets to further invest in their carefully monitored development with the 1958 formation of a photography branch of the Lithuanian SSR journalists union. It was to coordinate the efforts of amateurs and professionals across the country, with members allowed to meet professional photojournalists from Moscow to learn of mechanics and expectations. There was even some limited debate about what constituted art in photography. Just to allow amateurs at the table here spoke volumes about Soviet regard for them; they were intriguing prospects.

Romualdas would eventually join them. Beforehand in the 1960s, Sutkus club members shot and then exhibited at home and sometimes abroad, in galleries, museums, and colleges. They gave some notable shows across the decade, but none more important than the 1969 Moscow exhibition showcasing the three mentors and six others almost as gifted. Russian critics loved the originality and slice-of-life authenticity in the works by the Lithuanian photographers. The critical seal of approval fostered the formation of the Kaunas-based Lithuanian ArtPhotography Society. Its member shad arrived, functioning not just as recorders of May Day parades and soccer matches, but in the grander role of artists.

The stage was basically well set, then, by the time Požerskis officially joined the society in 1976. He’d been leaning this way for years, having decided on a photography career by 1974 while an engineering student at Kaunas Polytechnic Institute. He may even have been born to the calling, certainly an arguable assertion. His Lithuanian father was a civil engineer travelling through-out the USSR in the 1950s, a bridge builder who photographed his constructions, and on the side people and places encountered just for fun. Similarly he enjoyed travel, taking his family on long summer camping trips around the USSR. Romualdas in his longtime diary noted that he the son took his first photographs at age thirteen, using a camera received as a gift from Dad.

 

 

That meshed with the society on both the photography and travel counts, as its contemporary focus was on the rural areas. They prowled the country’s hinterlands in search of rural subjects by car or bus, or on a motorcycle as Romualdas initially did. It helped if you liked being constantly on the road. He also shared what was a common birthright among members; few were fond of the Russians. His own father had been exiled to Siberia after the war before being repatriated post-Stalin. A maternal uncle wasn’t so unfortunate, being executed by Soviet troops in 1945. As with Romualdas’s father this appeared arbitrary. Sutkus, Macijauskas, Rakauskas and many others could relate. All were aiming for realism in their portraits, and few were interested in whitewashing life under the Soviets. Especially not those from Kaunas, whose general populace had a reputation for being uncooperative if not outright rebellious subjects.

Membership would top 300 by 1978, about the same as today albeit with a different world view. They would talk shop at meetings and announce what particular artistic vein they were mining, which alerteda nyone considering something similar to look elsewhere. For Požerskis and contemporaries and every artist in any setting, you rise and fall withy our own ideas for focus and presentation. And Požerskis excelled at both, patiently working many of his themes for years as the following album trio (Victories and Defeats, Lithuanian Pilgrimages, and OldTowns) indicates. He picked the setitled sets himself as his three greatest legacies, an all Lithuanian-linked mix we briefly describe: 

“Victories and Defeats 1974–1976”

Požerskis was a rebel in his 1970s college days. He wore his hair long and dressed to suit, listened to western rock music, and drove a motorcycle with equally wild friends who served as subjects of his first album, “Restless Riders 1972–1974.” Out of the interest in cycles came “Victories,” a more technically refined collection on motocross racing with fewer posed shots than the first. Still, “Victories”seems a surprising choice to rank among his three most important works.

“Lithuanian Pilgrimages 1974–2001”

As one of the lesser efforts in his catalog, “Victories and Defeats” would ironically prove to mark his only significant success with the USSR’s most prestigious trade journal Soviet Photography. But his exceptional patience with projects to come would be ultimately rewarded with this his next selection. By chance in the later stages of “Victories and Defeats” he discovered the little town of Žemaičių Kalvarija, noted for its 400 year old Way of the Cross festival in July. This would serve as the backbone of perhaps his best album, culturally and artistically, and win him the National Arts prize in 1990.

There’s a shot that epitomizes the craft of the package (see “Chris-tening, 1979” below). In the fore-ground on a grassy mound off across roads three women are seen from the back, one in a babushka, the others in floral print dresses and shoes that even then were falling from fashion. In the background are a single house-drawn wagon surrounded by automobiles and people in more modern apparel mingling. Same cultural contrast, with an unpaved roundabout to balance the composition. He would exhibit that unique depth of vision more consistently in “Pilgrimages” than in any other album before or since.

“Old Towns 1974–1985”

During Soviet times, as Požerskis later recounted, Lithuania had hardly any street photography. Ninety-five percent of the photography was concentrated on the village scene, and Požerskis’ “Old Towns” was the only ongoing project. Later as often happens in cultural evolution, it became trendy for Lithuanian Photography Society cameramen to frequent the big cities and kill time in the café sand shops waiting for just the right lighting or situation. But Romualdas the trailblazer beat them to it, visiting in turn the inner cities of Kaunas, Vilnius and Klaipėda. The photographs taken in these setting were seedy and hardly an endorsement of splendid Soviet living. Naturally authorities were unenthusiastic about the album. As with the religion-oriented “Pilgrimages”, “Old Towns” was subject to censorship. Leader Sutkus had interceded with the Soviet Lithuanian government on Romualdas’s behalf for “Pilgrimages.” Their agreement was that photography of religious observances would be allowed but the product not internationally distributed. “Old Towns,” too, was permitted to be photographed, but in contrast was not allowed for domestic circulation. So again, with “Old Towns” Romualdas would have to wait for the second independence era for a free artistic rein. 

Someone once observed that the great irony of black and white photographs is that somehow they appear more realistic, despite the fact that life and light run in full color for most of us. And nowhere among his albums does the phenomenon of gritty monochrome realism do more to enhance the pictures than here.

 

 

Putting things in perspective

Other albums would followover the years, and given their wide date ranges it’s difficult to tell at what point Romualdas’ swork peaked. A good guess would be mid to late 70s which saw no less than six albums being created. Many of the best photos appearing online date from that period. Or if you wish to credit patriotic services rendered you might choose the images found in the “Way toIndependence 1988–1993” album, which included photos from the climactic week of Bloody Sun-day in Vilnius in 1991. Squeezing into and out the same bathroom window for three days at his peril, Požerskis straddled the line between photojournalism and art in the Parliament chambers, hallways, and nearby street, capturing the strain etched into the faces of participants. One notable exception was a photo of Vytautas Landsbergis looking supremely unruffled in a bulletproof vest and walking among three wary security officers. The first president reportedly has picked that particular photograph as one of his all-time favorites. 

Today much of Požerskis’ own journey as photographer is behind him. Many of his former associates including Romualdas Rakauskas have passed on. Požerskis had met his wife Virginija while she was a student during the wedding of his biker pal Zenonas Langaitis in 1975. Later Virginija worked in the administrative offices of the Photographer Society. Unfortunately, in 2017, Virginija drowned off a Baltic beach within sight of their grandchildren. His two children are grown, with daughter Monika providing continuity by following him into the field. For a generation now, Požerskis’ work has been shifting away from Lithuania-based human interest themes shot in black and white in favor of color and pure art. The old towns have been remodeled, and few of the faithful commute to the Kalvarija service by horse any-more. Change happens. 

Požerskis however remains quick to note that this is a majoras set of photographs. The farther in time they get from depicted events, the more valuable they become as a testament. And for his rare insight, industry, perseverance, craft, and attention to Lithuanian culture, Romualdas Požerskis should be revered for making that possible.