Bodyvision
This book of photos spans an ingenious spectrum of decades of artful nude photography from Lithuanian, the small country on the Baltic Sea.
The spectrum ranges from the 1960s, when the Soviet regime censored and prohibited the depiction of nudes, to the early 1990s, shortly after Lithuania declared its independence.
Ten Lithuanian photographers, including two women, visualize in moving nude photos their visions of love, yearning, anxiety, dreams, and even satire.
A wide diversity of aesthetic viewpoints about ways of photographing young and also older bodies make this book a visual experience for everyone who appreciates aesthetic, classical, black-and-white photography.
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Press comments and reviews
First Catholic, then communist prudishness prohibited nude photography in Lithuania. Only after perestroika was it possible for people to openly view the naked body. This book of photos features works by ten different Lithuanian artists, who pursue very different paths towards finding their motifs. Violeta Bubelyte, for example, creates photographic documentation exclusively of her own body. The youngest of the ten, Aurelija Cepulinskaite, photographs young girls and thus comes in contact with Western taboos. Alexandras Maciauskas emphasizes the eroticism of old age, while Virilis Sonta evokes a chillingly apocalyptic mood. Taken together, the photographic artworks from ten very different perspectives are a wide-ranging palette of discerning and non-voyeuristic nude photography. (PRINZ, Germany)
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Entirely unusual insights into the intimate world of Lithuanian people and their photographs. (SCHWARZWEISS, Germany)
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Lithuanian nude photography has a politically determined history all its own. The foreground is not occupied by sexually oriented depictions, but by the yearning for harmony and romanticism, and by a sense of humor and satire. These artworks by ten different photographers are astonishingly good, particularly because of their quiet beauty. (SCHWERINER VOLKSZEITUNG, Germany)
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The bodies themselves clearly show that this is the first time that they’ve been free to stretch their limbs and feel fresh air against naked skin. (SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, Germany)
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A new book of photos called “Bodyvision” has just been published. Lithuanian photographers understand nude photography not as the prurient depiction of sensationalist sex, but as a sensitive approach towards human feelings. The spectrum ranges from chaste dreams to satirical posing. (NEUE WESTFÄLISCHE, Germany)
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The photos look honest and natural. Now they’re finally being shown in the West. (COLOR FOTO, Germany)
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The book presents the work of ten Lithuanian photographers who prefer the simple honesty of nude photography rather than shrilly sensationalist stagings. (BERLINER ZEITUNG, Germany)
