Postfotografija: Lietuvos fotografijos evoliucijos akligatvis ar tarpinė grandis?

LT2006 m. Lietuvos meno lauke iškilo ir gana greitai įsitvirtino bei aštrias diskusijas paskatino naujas terminas – postfotografija. Jaunosios kartos menotyrininkų, kuratorių ir menininkų pradėtas postfotografijos sąjūdis siekė kritiškai dekonstruoti institucinę fotografijos sistemą, paviešinti jos dogmas bei praplėsti fotografinės raiškos ir diskurso ribas šiuolaikinio meno kontekste. Tačiau šio reiškinio aktualumas Lietuvoje buvo trumpalaikis – sumažėjus domėjimuisi atskirų medijų problemika, po 2010 m. fotografijos aktualijų svarstymuose postfotografijos sąvoka vartota retai. Vis dėlto kritinis požiūris į fotografiją visiškai neišnyko, nes šiuolaikinio meno kūrėjai fotografines priemones tebenaudoja įvairiomis nekonvencinėmis formomis. Todėl prasidedant XXI a. 3-iajam dešimtmečiui atrodo svarbu apsvarstyti ir apibendrinti postfotografijos idėjų reikšmę ir poveikio mastą Lietuvoje. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Postfotografija; Išplėstinė fotografija; Šiuolaikinė fotografija; Medijų menas; Šiuolaikinis menas; Postphotography; Expanded photography; Contemporary photography; Media art; Contemporary art; Lithuania.

ENThe year 2006 saw a new term emerge and take root quite rapidly in the Lithuanian photography and contemporary art field, triggering a heated debate (primarily between younger-generation artists and curators and some members of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers): postphotography. This term and phenomenon, imported from the international discourse, first materialised in an exhibition titled comments@3xposition.lt, publicly co-curated by a group of fellow-minded artists and theorists at the Union’s head gallery in Vilnius, and the accompanying events and publications. The polemic on the prospects of postphotography unfolded in the Lithuanian cultural press for approximately two more years, until 2008. Although there were multiple attempts to define postphotography at the time, what all of them had in common was an emphasis on the necessity of comprehending photography as a medium, a discursive system of communication and distribution, and a platform for the production of meaning. Thus, the postphotographic movement inevitably adopted a critical and deconstructivist perspective on (art) photography as an institutionalised system, and essentially commented on the latter, seeking to expose its entrenched dogmas and expand the limits of photographic expression and discourse. The movement was closely allied with the field of new media culture and art, predominantly fostered by some of the same artists, curators, and researchers. Both scenes waned in Lithuania by the early 2010s, when the interest in the media discourse declined, and most of their key players settled in the postmedial contemporary art field and distanced themselves from the discourses associated with particular historical art forms, as well as critical deconstruction of the latter.Although one of the aims of the postphotography movement was to integrate photography in the spectrum of the means of expression employed by contemporary art, the latter more or less independently assimilated it as merely one of the different media used to express a concept or a phenomenon of mass visual culture, without taking into account its specific history as an art form and its medial qualities (unlike the postphotographic paradigm). After 2010, the concept of postphotography has been emerging in Lithuanian reflections on photography and the broader visual culture only in retrospect, as a historical phenomenon without an active discourse. Nevertheless, postphotographic strategies can still be identified in the individual practices of artists more or less gravitating towards the photographic community, yet some commentators have voiced concern that such work fails to produce a qualitatively new critical gesture. Meanwhile, in the context of contemporary art, artists continue to actively explore the circulation of photographic images in the expanded cultural field, yet the ideological premises of such exploration have changed. Artists have become more preoccupied with ‘posthuman’ phenomena like machine vision, anonymous circulation of images online and offline, such images as data compounds, and algorithmic photography, as opposed to the deconstruction of photographic conventions. Hence, more recent artistic endeavours focused on the image do not take postphotography as their inspiration or point of reference. The article aims to discuss the legacy of the Lithuanian postphotographic discourse and its input into the development of the photography and contemporary art fields, as well as to determine the extent of its impact. [From the publication]

• Lietuvos fotografija, 1990-2010 / Agnė Narušytė. Vilnius : "Baltų lankų" leidyba, 2011. 343 p.
• Unwritten histories of extinct media art in Lithuania: from the 2000s of great promise to the multidirectional 2010s / Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė. Acoustic space. 2016, 15, p. 70-83.