February

In brief: The world is impatient, full of haste, people and moments rushing in fragments. In such context the photographer Vytautas Pletkus appears as a guest from another time or rather a wary host of his own time. Recently V. Pletkus has published his photo album ‘Bridges’ (Union of Lithuanian Photographers, Kaunas Department, 2011).

The cover of the album (editor and artist – Vytautas Stanionis) is phenomenal. It seems like nothing more than a well-known greyness, moist, several modest letters absorbing the mist. However, the image is chosen very thoughtfully – it is familiar but not boring, spacious but containable, dense but not boggy.

Ironically, the editor tried hard to escape the topic of bridges, even though it is dominating, but finally the entire album became one large bridge. Even the title of the album is somewhat in the air between the sky and earth, heavy and floating in the fog, levitating somewhere in ‘between’.

V. Pletkus’s bridges do not just join two coasts as usual. They could be called continuations of image, memory and the being. There is a reason why the author photographs bridges in the morning, sinking in the haze as huge mythical creatures – extinct and eternal, evoking amazement, respectful fear and astonishment. People are rare guests in this album – one can see their shapes melting in the mist now and then. The bridge is always above (the human being, earth, water, bushes…) and at once it is always in between.  

There are also works from other series by V. Pletkus that keep the same impression in the album. Gray cities look real and unstable, familiar and out of reach, inhabited but with no habitants. V. Pletkus tells us about the world beyond bridges of time, about the beginning and the continuity of the end.

At first glance, V. Pletkus’s works seem simple, sometimes even monotonous. However, there is something restless in that peace. It looks like the gray light slows down the flow of time. People do not notice that and fly inertly by the bridges of time, which falls into photography becoming an image – casual and unfamiliar.