Vitas Luckus was like a meteor: brilliant and captivating, but tragically extinguished. Although he was part of a generation of humanistic photographers who peered into the human soul, he can be duly considered the pioneer of conceptual photography in Lithuania. Luckus wasn’t intrigued by rural Lithuanian life – he was more drawn to recording the people he encountered on his travels and their daily routines, experimenting with work styles and photomontages. The characters captured by his camera included people of different nationalities, ages, genders, and professions. Luckus saw photography as a form of living contact with reality.
A large part of Luckus’ archives consists of sensual portraits of his muse and wife Tatjana that celebrate the beauty and mystery of women. Eroticism was a taboo subject in Soviet visual culture, although sexualized images occasionally made their way into the public domain. In Luckus’ work, eroticism appeared as an inevitable part of a frenzied life – a vital, pulsating energy. In the photographs in this exhibition, Luckus emphasized the materiality of the body, creating still lifes with the reflections of male and female bodies in a mirror shard. Using these small fragments of the body, Luckus conveyed an anonymous atmosphere, central to which was a universal desire to live.