In Vilnius – the exhibition “Sulaukti” by Irena Giedraitienė, who has been photographing for seven decades Culture

The exhibition will be open until August 17.

Irena Giedraitienė has not parted with her camera for almost seventy years. Having started taking photographs in 1955, having gained international recognition, Irena is compared to the most important authors of humanistic photography and today she considers the camera her faithful companion.

I. Giedraitienė with her camera patiently and carefully waits for the moment when there will be favorable circumstances for the birth of a new photographic work. In an interview, Irena said: “I make the selection even before I press the button. The photographer’s job is to see the event before it happens, predict it, and then wait for it to happen. Intuition and patient observation are necessary for this – perhaps the most important “weapons” of a photographer. The world is constantly changing, so everything must change very quickly in the photographer’s mind and in his vision. After all, suddenly the scene you invented can fall to pieces, so you must suddenly find a new approach to the radically changed circumstances.”

Photo by Irena Giedraitienė/Dancing

In Irena’s photographs, those patiently awaited shots are interwoven with endless passion and love for the subjects and photography itself. Maybe that’s why I. Giedraitienė, although she was respected among photographers, kept a little distance from the constructive and rational world of men.

Today, Irena Giedraitienė’s works are presented in the most important Lithuanian photography galleries, published in international photography collections, and included in museum collections.

The exhibition in the “Prospekto” gallery is as if divided into two parts: the first shows the three most important and iconic works of I. Giedraitienė, which earned the author fame and recognition. And in the second part, the viewer will encounter that passionate and life-loving, always smiling Irena, who reviews her long-accumulated archives, combines photographs from already known cycles with moments observed today and constructs the story as an unstoppable flow of life.

Irena Giedraitienė’s photo/Makeup. From the series “Wedding”. Kaunas, 1977

Giedraitienė was born in 1935. in Panevėžys. 1954-1959 she studied at the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute and later worked for more than three decades at the Kaunas Design Institute Žemprojektas.

One of the most important achievements of I. Giedraitienė is in 1975. won the World Press Photo Golden Eye Award. The photographer participated in more than 50 personal and more than 40 group exhibitions in Lithuania and more than 90 exhibitions abroad (or outside the former Lithuanian SSR). in 2014 she was granted the status of an honorary member of the Lithuanian Union of Photographic Artists.