{"id":2048,"date":"2015-07-15T01:14:35","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T07:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/draugas.org\/news\/?p=2048"},"modified":"2016-01-16T01:15:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T07:15:43","slug":"balys-buracas-ethnographic-photographer-illuminating-the-spirit-of-lithuania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/balys-buracas-ethnographic-photographer-illuminating-the-spirit-of-lithuania\/","title":{"rendered":"Balys Bura\u010das \u2014Ethnographic Photographer : Illuminating the spirit of Lithuania"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Stanislovas\u00a0\u017dvirg\u017edas.<\/p>\n

\"Balys
Balys as a young man carrying works of folk art in\u00a0Sidariai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Balys Bura\u010das (1897-1972) was a photographer who created a vast archive of visual memory of Lithuanian villages and ethnic culture. He was a chronicler, saving the remnants of a life that was fast disappearing from people\u2019s memories. Many post-war Lithuanian art photographers have long acknowledged that they grew up and matured within the traditions of ethnographic photography pioneered by him. How did the creative journey of our distinguished photographer begin?<\/p>\n

In his autobiography, Balys describes the beginnings of his interest in photography at the age of 18: \u201cI obtained my first camera on April 14, 1915, and it was then that I learned how to take pictures.\u201d Balys Bura\u010das got this camera from a German soldier whose unit was marching through the town of \u0160iaul\u0117nai, near Bura\u010das\u2019 birthplace in the village of Sidariai. For the camera, Bura\u010das had exchanged a wooden staff containing artistic carvings of snakes, leaves, flowers and birds. It was a metal camera with bellows, equipped with 6 x 9 cm. glass plates to hold the negative. The shutter had only one exposure speed of 1\/2 second, and the very simple lens did not have an adjustable aperture. Bura\u010das quickly obtained some materials for developing photographic film, and then boldly began to develop his first photographic plates. In his initial attempts, he was able to print out a fairly good picture from the wet negative, but then the emulsion dripped away when he tried to use fire to dry it. Later on he had better luck. The 18-year-old photographer learnedhow to take photographs in the region of \u0160iauliai. \u201cI began with familiar locations where I had seen cottages and barns decorated with wood carvings as well as other examples of the art of woodcarving.\u201d Having once tried photography, he got caught up in it, and it became his life\u2019s passion.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Bura\u010das homestead in Sidariai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1919, Bura\u010das joined the Lithuanian army, but was released when he fell ill with tuberculosis. The next year, he completed his studies at a teachers\u2019 college in \u0160iauliai, and for the next seven years he supported himself as a teacher and administrator in various schools in the region.<\/p>\n

\"Wayside
Wayside shrine to St. Agatha in Okainiai (by folk sculptor V. Svirskis).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1924 the painter Adomas Varnas was concerned that wayside crosses, which in his opinion were national artistic treasures, were fast disappearing. Varnas engaged Bura\u010das to help him preserve this legacy art form. As Varnas wrote to the young ethnographer: \u201cMaybe it would be worthwhile to take up this work seriously. We should do this work not for profit, but in order to rescue treasures which are in danger of perishing.\u201d Bura\u010das began to systematically photograph these crosses, sending the pictures and negatives to Varnas. Once, one of Bura\u010das\u2019 photographic journeys turned into an adventure. He stopped at a cemetery in the town of \u0160auk\u0117nai to take pictures of some gravesite crosses. As he was quietly engaged in his task, a group of local women gathered and began to shout at him: \u201cYou atheist! Get out of the cemetery! The pastor said that you left your bicycle by the house of Mykoliukas, a scoundrel just like you. How dare you knock down our crosses?\u201d It made no difference to the women that he had come not to destroy but to preserve the memory of these intricate crosses carved by gifted artisans. Balys had to jump a fence to avoid pursuit by the angry locals, otherwise his camera might have been smashed.<\/p>\n

\"Wayside
Wayside cross in Dubaklonis(Dz\u016bkija)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1928 Balys Bura\u010das gave up his job as a teacher and devoted his life to photography and ethnography. In an orderly fashion he compiled books of photographs that catalogued folk art and village people at work and attending various social events. The notes of Balys Bura\u010das give us an idea of the scope of his ethnographic efforts. \u201c\u2026 In 1929 I traveled across Lithuania at the request of the M. K. \u010ciurlionis Gallery, and I collected examples of folk art. I took about 300 photographs of 10 x 15 cm.; \u2026 In 1932 I took about 700 negatives in eastern, northern and western Lithuania [\u201cRyt\u0173 Auk\u0161taitijoje, \u0160iaur\u0117s Lietuvoje ir \u017demaitijoje\u201d]; \u2026 In 1933 \u2013 700 photographs in southern Lithuania [\u201cDz\u016bkijoje\u201d]; \u2026 in 1934 I took about 800 photographs, and I took notes of the folklore and folk customs in the region around the villages of Kupi\u0161kis, Skapi\u0161kis and \u0160imonys; \u2026 In 1936 the Museum of Vytautas the Great in Kaunas sent me to eastern Lithuania [\u201cpo Ryt\u0173 Auk\u0161taitij\u0105\u201d] where I took about 300 photographs.\u201d There washardly a magazine or newspaper in pre-war Lithuania that did not have photographs of Balys Bura\u010das or did not contain his articles about folk customs, festivals and traditions. In 1937 Balys Bura\u010das won a Great Gold Medal at the Paris World Fair for a collection of 25 ethnographic photographs. After he won the gold medal, his photographs were published in journals of other countries. They appeared in Illustrated London News, in the French encyclopedia Larousse, in the Czech and German press, and in the press of Lithuanians living in the United States.<\/p>\n

In his genre photographs Bura\u010das succeeded in capturing an instant of time, as if he had inadvertently come upon people busy at their daily labors, selling goods at market, celebrating weddings, grieving at funerals, going to church or putting up crosses by their homes, in cemeteries or by village roads. He photographed folk artists, women at the spinning wheel, carpenters, young shepherds in the fields, participants in village fairs, singers, storytellers and matchmakers. Often he would wait until the subject had immersed himself in his or her work and had forgotten that there was a photographer present watching him. Bura\u010das meticulously recorded when and where each photograph was taken, and what it depicted. He liked to give precise descriptions of the objects or customs portrayed in his photographs, and he added colorful biographical details to his photographs of folk artists. These photographs and their accompanying notes provide us with a chronicle of past Lithuanian life. They are a visual record of the memory of Lithuania which cannot be duplicated. The old spirit of the nation lives on in the moments captured in his photographs.<\/p>\n

\"Potter
Potter selling her wares.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the spring of 1944 Bura\u010das had amassed an archive of about 18,000 negatives and 26,400 prints. He had walked or ridden across all of Lithuania, visiting even the smallest population centers. \u201cThere is no city, town or village that I did not visit.\u201d Unfortunately, a large part of this archive perished during the Second World War. Even during the years of the war when Lithuania was under German occupation, Bura\u010das continued to travel across Lithuania, and he provided the press with his descriptions of Lithuanian customs illustrated with his own photographs. The photographs of Balys Bura\u010das filled all of the publications permitted at that time, including the magazines \u012e Laisv\u0119 (Into Freedom), Ateitis (The Future) , Naujoji sodyba (The New Homestead) and \u017dibur\u0117lis (The Light). After the Second World War, Bura\u010das continued to take pictures, and as a certified photographer he traveled along river banks and photographed burial mounds, historical sites and cultural monuments.<\/p>\n

\"Dugout
Dugout canoe by Merkin\u0117 in Dz\u016bkija<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1953, Bura\u010das nominally retired, but he continued taking pictures because he felt he had to preserve quickly what war and time had not destroyed. He again traveled to villages, and he was able to find prewar ethnographic motifs and to repopulate with new photographs archives which had been destroyedin the war. He added 2,500 negatives to his collection during the years 1957 to 1960, when he again visited all of the principal regions of Lithuania. In 1965, as Balys Bura\u010das celebrated his 50-year anniversary of ethnographic work, he wrote: \u201cGet the idea out of your head that after you cross the half-century mark, the days of your life are declining, or that your steps are becoming shorter and slower. Just think about how little you have done and about how much more you can do, because no one else is going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balys Bura\u010das was one of the foundational pillars on which the school of Lithuanian photography was built and continues to rely. His impact was to show how documentary and artistic photography could be organically fused. Comparatively little was written about him while he was alive. Just before his death, in 1971, Virgilijus Juodakis authored a short book entitled Balys Bura\u010das (Vaga Press). In Lithuania, Bura\u010das\u2019 work was increasingly recognized in books of photography published after his death, in 1988, 1999, 2006 and 2011. In 2000, an exhibition dedicated to his work, titled \u201cPhotographs from Central Europe I\u201d was held in Berlin. Art critics describing the exhibition emphasized how the spirit of pre-war Lithuania was illuminated in these photographs that showed people who were full of vitality, energy, hope and belief in the future of a young and modern country.<\/p>\n

\"Folk
Folk art sculpture \u201cbalvonas\u201d by J. Gedminas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We should be proud that Lithuania had such a classic photographer. He is someone who can easily be included in the world history of photography. If Mikalojus Konstantinas \u010ciurlionis gave us a soul, Balys Bura\u010das gave our country a body. Today a large photographic archive of Bura\u010das\u2019 work can be found in the Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas (more than 11,000 negatives). The National M. K. \u010ciurlionis Art Museum has over a thousand photographs, and other museums number his photographs in the tens and the hundreds.<\/p>\n

Translated by Rimas \u010cernius.<\/em><\/p>\n

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by Stanislovas\u00a0\u017dvirg\u017edas. Balys Bura\u010das (1897-1972) was a photographer who created a vast archive of visual memory of Lithuanian villages and ethnic culture. He was a chronicler, saving the remnants of a life that was fast disappearing from people\u2019s memories. Many post-war Lithuanian art photographers have long acknowledged that they grew up and matured within the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,70],"tags":[78,117],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-art","category-history-1900","tag-lith-heritage","tag-zvirgzdas-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}