Too good to be photographed

Project & publication

Too Good To Be Photographed explores intricate relationship between photography and failure. On the one hand, it delves into an inability of photography to accurately replicate vision. On the other, there is a larger cultural issue at focus. It relates to our societal investment in photography to truly depict what we see and endow it with an attribute of “truthfulness”.

The project deals with a special discrepancy: that moment when photography breaks. When the camera collapses as a mechanical-eye, and when the medium fails as a cultural replicator of our looking. In other words, the project presents photography’s B-sides, failures, non-successes, defeats. Which ultimately leads to questions about our desires of what photography should be and should be able to do.

The project results from a series of conversations between curator Paulius Petraitis and over 60 artists over a year’s time. The examples gathered can be broadly distinguished into two categories. First are documented “failures” that happened after the fact, that is, after the viewing of a photograph (a sudden realization that this particular image fails to capture some aesthetic or conceptual qualities of the view, or fails to reconnect to the memory of this specific moment, etc). The second group explores the conceptual limitations inherent in the camera and its ability to document.

Book published by Lugemik. Designed by Indrek Sirkel. Essays by Roksana Filipowska, Rye Holmboe, Paulius Petraitis, and Jaclyn Wright.

It features more than 150 photographs by 47 artists from 17 countries:
Hieronymus Ahrens (DE), Cassidy Araiza (US), Roxana Azar (US), Sergiy Barchuk (US/UKR), Tine Bek (UK), Alexander Binder (DE), Etienne Courtois (BE), Paloma Dooley (US), Yael Eban (ISR), Jason Fulford (US), Harry Griffin (US), Alexander Harding (US), Aaron Hegert (US), Mishka Henner (UK), Sam Hutchinson (UK), Janna Ireland (US), Go Itami (JPN), Tim Johannis (NL), Cole Don Kelley (US), Wawrzyniec Kolbusz (PL), Paul Kuimet (EE), Daniel Kukla (US), Fred Lahache (FR), Inka & Niclas Lindergård (SE), Tom Lovelace (UK), Carlos Lowenstein (US), Michael Marcelle (US), Katja Mater (NL), Lydia Mccarthy (US), Nich Hance McElroy (US), Aso Mohammadi (IRN/CH), Awoiska Van Der Molen (NL), Ryan L. Moule (UK), Luke Libera Moore (US), Erin O’Keefe (US), Eva O’Leary (US), Kristina Õllek (EE), Ke Peng (CHN), Hanna Putz (AT), Johan Rosenmunthe (DK), Margaux Roy (FR), Erik Schubert (US), Brea Souders (US), Javier Torok (AR/US), Athena Torri (ECU/IT), Casey James Wilson (US), Jaclyn Wright (US).

Sergiy Barchuk / Hanna Putz

Katja Mater / Erin O’Keefe

Too good to be photographed book launch and presentation at Rubber Factory, in the framework of NYABF 2017. Panel: Yael Eban, Roksana Filipowska, Jaclyn Wright, and Paulius Petraitis. Photo: Indrek Sirkel

Pinigų uostas / Money haven

Interactive installation

Pinigu uostas / Money Haven was a performative simulation of an offshore company. It investigated the rhetoric of international tax evasion and raised the question what mechanisms legitimize and normalise these practices. The project directly appropriated infamous companies offering such services (such us “Mossack Fonseca” and “The Nomad Capitalist”). The imitated elements of their rhetoric and aesthetics reflect the familiar logic of contemporary business thinking, in which a lack of expertise is masked via overconfidence and a standard design, pursuing an illusion of legitimacy.

In the performative installation, which balances between absurdity and seriousness, Money Haven aims to explore how the corporate practice of tax evasion affects the decline of a collective wellbeing on the state level. These tensions are more extensively discussed in the project’s magazine Post-Colonial Times.

Part of Dignity JCDecaux prize show, curated by Monika Kalinauskaitė and Adomas Narkevičius, at CAC Vilnius 2018 11 30 – 2019 01 13.

Pinigu Uostas / Money Haven: Ieva Sriebaliūtė, Mindaugas Gavrilovas, Paulius Petraitis
Entrepreneur performance: Andrej Polukord
Arrow spinning: Linas Čekanavičius

Photos: Inga Jankūnaitė, Daina Eičaitė, JCDecaux

A man with dark hair and a sunset in the background

Photographic project & publication

A man with dark hair and a sunset in the background (2017-2020) explores visual recognition through a dialogue-based approach with an image interpretation software. Each personal photograph in the series is paired with captions ascribed by Microsoft Azure image interpretation system.

Published by 6 chairs books & Lugemik
Design by Tadas Karpavičius
Text by Monika Kalinauskaitė

Available to order here and here

Press:
Blok | Duncan Wooldridge
C4 journal | Lewis Bush
Echo gone wrong | Keiu Krikmann
15 min | Geistė Kinčinaitytė (LT)

The combinations of image and captions highlight the gap between human and machine seeing, and are poetic and humorous. Offering a differentiated perspective of the surrounding world, the project raises questions related to the role technology plays in our seeing, as well as its seeming objectivity.

The project was presented in a solo exhibition at Lokomotif in Lentvaris in 2019.

A man with dark hair and a sunset in the background was also presented in group exhibitions Screen Age I: Self-Portrait (Riga Photography Biennial, 2018) and Homo Absentia (2020/2021).

As part of Homo Absentia exhibition in Vilnius squares. Photo: Imantas Selenis

Detail of A man with dark hair and a sunset in the background in Homo Absentia exhibition. Photo: Visvaldas Morkevičius