Fuck it

More to follow.

Quick update

Greetings from England, where I’ve been more or less stuck in bed since I arrived with the most horrid attack of a virus that’s rendered me full of pain and coughs. Accordingly I haven’t felt like doing anything, including keeping this blog up to date. And so, as much as I’m not in the mood for doing it, I really do need to get some stuff on paper, metaphorically speaking. The Karaite project is going nowhere. The community aren’t interested in working with me, and having played with the idea of a photographic project about the places and people around them but that doesn’t include them (which works nicely in my head, and that if done could serve as a wake-up call in the sense that what I really wanted to convey was to see the world without the Lithuanian Karaite in it) to the point of actually making another trip to Trakai to explore how I might go about this, I don’t feel particularly inspired to pursue it. I do however believe that there are things about the Lithuanian Karaite that are truly extraordinary (they are after all both Jewish and Muslim), and will keep them on the backburner. What I really need to do is physically meet the woman who makes the decisions, but as I think I’ve already mentioned, she’s away working in Western Europe. So, that leaves me with Mindaugas Rutkauskas, who unlike the Lithuanian Karaite is wildly enthusiastic about what I’m doing and very relaxed about me working with him. A quick technical point I should make is that I was right originally to do the project in black and white. Having shot him again, it was clear that the light in Lithuania in winter is simply too bad for colour (I’d actually read something to that affect written by a Lithuanian photographer a few days before I made the decision), and thinking about the documentary photography I like… most of it is black and white. Maybe it’s something to do with my age? Who cares? I love the magic simplicity of the black and white image. At this moment in time, I’d have to say the work that strikes the most chords inside me and that I can identify with is the work of Cartier-Bresson (God I hate saying this, but it’s true), Bert Hardy and O Winston Link. Anyway, during my first quick shoot with Mindaugas in his workshop I was intrigued to find out how he got to work. It turns out he walks, so there was my second shoot. Just before I left for the UK last week I met him on a bridge as planned and walked into work with him, getting to know him more and taking a few pictures. A crude edit of the two shoots can be seen here. To add a little more information before I crawl back under the duvet, Mindaugas is married with three children and studied history at Vilnius University. His story is like that of any other person, which is sort of what attracts me to it, and his reason for becoming a ceramic artist was that he didn’t want to work in an office. When I met him on the bridge he’d just been to one of Vilnius’ most popular folk restaurants for whom he’s just made new salt and pepper pots. I want to go them are take pictures of people eating and using his pots. This is exactly the kind of ordinary magic that inspires me. Anyway, back to bed.

Pah

Like a deafening silence, the Lithuanian Karaite are conspicuous by their absence in Trakai. It was only when I saw two young Karaite women in a car as I was walking back to the bus station today after failing to take one single photograph worth posting (maybe a fresh look tomorrow will change the situation) that I realised I hadn’t seen any at all in the three hours I was there. Lithuanian Karaite Visibility comes courtesy of many things in Trakai, not least the two restaurants (three actually, at least when the other one at the Karaite Community centre is open, which it never is) selling the classic Lithuanian Karaite dish kibinai. Will kibinai be the only thing left to remember them by in 20 years I wonder? Even the spelling’s been Lithuanianised, the Karaite word for it being kybyn. I’m suddenly reminded of the Lithuanian dish kugelis, which is transformed when spelt differently into the old Jewish favourite, kugel. I even know Lithuanians who’ve been to university who are convinced is a Lithuanian invention. Trakai (total population less than 5,000) is a hugely popular tourist destination for Lithuanians and foreigners alike, a town that draws on its Karaite heritage to the point of dependence. I went there today, a horribly sunny affair that promised little in the way of emotive photography, with nothing in the way of an agenda and to be honest not a little pissed off with the cold reception I’ve so far received from the Lithuanian Karaite movement themselves, who remain stubborn to say the least with regards to me invading their lives. In the back of my mind I was interested in exploring the idea of photographing the very lack of the Karaite in the town as mentioned in the first paragraph, which could possibly yield an interesting photographic essay of a culture that refuses to play ball. Like some demented African explorer I wandered about the town, photographing empty playgrounds, benches with nobody sitting on them, broken pleasure boats on the shore of the lake with the Karaite cemetery in the background across the water, waiting for the vanished tribe to materialise. I was kind of interested by my earlier photographs of the Polish gentleman, Henryk, who lives next to the Karaite cemetery and who expressed indifference to the culture he shares the town with. In fact, just about the only word I wrote down when I was there was indifference. Whilst taking a photograph of a parking meter I was accosted by an elderly chap who told me his name was Vytautas, the very name of the Lithuanian Grand Duke responsible for bringing the Karaite to Lithuania in the first place. My Vytautas, a native of Trakai, had nothing to say about the Karaite. Indifference. I farted around on the island named after the Karaite, took pictures of the bridge named in their honour (the last thing they cross before being lowered into the Trakai soil for all eternity at the ends of their lives) and even knocked on the doors of the houses on either side of the Kenesa to see if I could start some kind of dialogue with somebody. Everybody was out, and I felt like a total idiot. Now I just feel angry, not least because I’m flying to the UK in a couple of days and feel like I’ve achieved nothing. On a rosier note, I called my blind ceramics man earlier and he’s agreed to let me take photographs of him walking to work. At least something’s moving in the right direction, although it does feel a bit like a case of the blind leading the blind. Next up, find a subject to work on in the UK.

Minor update

Have been on a glorious extended seaside weekend away from technology and am back again in an expensive flat with even more expensive heating that doesn’t work (but that still has to be paid for). In among the usual crap in my inbox on my return was a short reply to a Karaite-hunting email I sent to my good friend Dovid Katz, who as usual knows exactly the right people to contact as who’s open all the appropriate doors. It feels good to not only have a proper project to chase but one that requires interaction with my fellow species. I’ve been indulging in my isolation too much of late and have suffered for it. Switching the mobile/serious photography has been a breath of fresh air. I feel like I’ve achieved everything I can with my mobile wanderings, but have got from it a fresh set of ideas as already outlined here for my Mobile Nation project. Dainius is still not finished answering the questions I sent him, but I’m still young. I now need to concentrate on how to develop this project further. I think I mentioned my desire to continue my work with my friend Douglas in Greece (the one who had the stroke), and am currently pondering this. I’m blissfully broke and haven’t felt so good in ages.

I should point out however

I should point out however as come to think of it I haven’t actually mentioned it anywhere, that the main theme of the project is to photograph, initially, the remaining members of the Trakai Karaite community, then, if things go well, to work on the rest of them in Lithuania. Other cultural issues such as food, religion, language etc, and how to go about looking into them photographically, remain side issues that I may or may not explore depending on how the project progresses.

More thoughts about the Karaite

Searching the internet for Karaite-related information today I came across the BBC Who Do You Think You Are site. For those who aren’t familiar with it it’s a documentary series that’s hitched a ride on the back of the current obsession with tracing family history that follows celebrities as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of their ancestral past. I’ve seen a few of them, but not the one that came up in my search, namely the programme that focused on the English actor David Suchet. The two things I find of particular note about the series are the importance of family history as a way of telling historical stories in a personal way and the fact that we don’t really know much about our ancestors, and are quite often astonished when we start to look into them. Suchet knew his family history less than a hundred years back, namely that of his grandfather who came to the UK from South Africa. He knew that he had Eastern European Jewish roots, but no more than that. Using a Russianised version of his family name he managed to work his way back to of all places Lithuania, or rather modern-day Lithuania that at the time he was interested in knowing more about was, after exhaustive research both part of tsarist Russia and the Prussian Empire. Dipping into old records he soon discovered that far from being descended from Eastern European Jewry he was in fact the descendent of Turks (thus the connection with the Karaite, who incidentally weren’t mentioned in the programme but who came up in the comments left on the series website by its readers). Anyhow, the thing that really struck me in relation to the project I’m embarking on with the Karaite is that it’s particularly important to create this series of portraits for the benefit of future generations. Photographic evidence on its own is powerful enough (eg. the slow cultural changes in Karaite clothing from their traditional costumes in the late 19th century through to the now uniform (no pun intended) adoption of Western clothing. With the addition of some writing, I firmly believe the project will make a significant addition to the history of the Karaite, not least because from all the research I’ve do far uncovered, nobody has made any serious or otherwise photographic record of the Karaite community. Ethnically, the Lithuanian Karaite are utterly unique, despite sharing some common heritage with their neighbours over the border in Poland. This is most evident in their language, which contains many instances of Lithuanian alongside the Polish and Russian influences as seen in the language of the Polish Karaite (of which I should point out there are less than the population of the Lithuanian Karaite). The last head count of the Lithuanian Karaite population took place in 1997, of which it was found that there were 252 left in the country, 60 or so of them in Trakai, the spiritual home of the Turkic offshoot of the world Karaite movement. Alongside the language, I’m particularly interested in recording somehow their religious practices (the Karaite are unusual in that they remove their shoes before entering a kenesa, or Karaite synagogue), which must surely betray their Turkic (Islamic?) origins. Their folk art also looks entirely Islamic, and their food is also very non-Jewish. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, most remaining Lithuanian Karaite are busy integrating within modern Lithuanian society, with only a handful attempting to hang on to their original culture. This was brought home to me when I made my test picture of Artūras, who when asked if he was going to marry a Karaite woman said it depended entirely on his heart. Following ones heart may be the best way to live life, but under certain circumstances it can mean whether an entire ethnic group survives or is wiped off the face of the planet. Unfortunately, yesterday I couldn’t attend the session with John, and this weekend I’m busy with other things, so there’s not much to report on the Karaite project beyond my usual trains of thought. I have however emailed representatives of the Karaite community (on the recommendation of Artūras) but don’t hold out much hope for a response. As in most things, it’s the personal touch that’s going to move things along. More research has uncovered the fact that nobody really knows who the Lithuanian Karaite are. There’s no doubt that they came from the Crimea at the end of the 14th century, but how this ethnically Turkic group ended up converting to Karaite Judaism, and exactly who they were when they did, remains a total mystery. Just how I’m going to go about this project visually also remains at least in part a mystery. I decided before I made my first trip to Trakai last weekend that I was going to do the project in black and white, but beyond that I don’t have much idea about style. Most important is a visual record accompanied by an underlying documentary/journalistic approach to the work. I’ve been looking at portraits today, and although I find the more interesting and dramatic examples visually exciting, I do wonder if sometimes this style of over-romanticising photography takes more away from the very essence of the subject than it adds. I suppose only time can tell where all of this is going to lead me.

The Karaite

Artūras Lavrinovičius
23, Trakai
Single
Business studies student and administrator in Karaite restaurant in Vilnius

Dear John

Not much in the way of new things to show this week, more a quick update including where I’m and where I hope this is going to take me. I’ll be brief.



Borders
Have abandoned the history of Vilnius idea because I can’t see it fitting with the Nokumentary postcard approach. Instead, firstly for aesthetic reasons I took the borders idea literally and have started putting white borders on my mobile phone street pictures. On a black background they look superb. Second, I’m churning this new material out at a ridiculously low size. As the global economy crumbles around our ears I think it’s time to think small. Paul Klee took a line for a walk and created small masterpieces. I take my phone for a walk and try to do the same. About the pictures I take with my phone on the street, I’m trying to capture the essence of what I see in front of me. Unlike the current trend in street photography (no time to quote anyone) that’s more about showing how clever the photographer is (people going up ladders into the sky, people who look like people in posters behind them etc), I’m really charmed with the idea of truly documenting the briefest of moments that somehow show more. I try hard to make my pictures look good of course, but not clever. Never clever. I’m going to keep moving forwards with this and see where it takes me. No plans as yet to abandon the idea as the Borders project. I’m treading the borders of acceptable documentary photography already, so that’s ok with me. Sometimes I despair at this work, but general I see an interesting and worthwhile body of work coming together.


Mobile Nation
As I start to write this sitting in a temporary office I realise Dainius’ new photographs are on my laptop back at the flat. Never mind. Dainius has just split with his girlfriend, and is trying to get his client, Daniel, the guy in the wheelchair, a girlfriend. He’s been photographing some of it. The project remains chaotic because as far as I know there’s no precedent plus until Dainius finishes and sends back the questionnaire I sent him I can’t really start putting ideas together. I’m still young, and this is such a great idea, that I’m in no hurry. To up the ante a little, I’m working on adding my second person to the project, my friend Douglas in Greece. Douglas had a massive stroke four years ago, which has severely affected the left side of his body (his arm is totally useless and his leg is so bad he has to go everywhere with a stick) and his mind, which has gone from an arrogant, outspoken, sharp tool into something that would belong better inside the head of a shy four-year-old girl. For a few months earlier this year I started a photographic project with Douglas, filming his life on my dSLR. My lifestyle means I find this difficult to keep up with, so have thought about getting Douglas to start taking photographs with his phone and to work on a project with me. He’s already started writing his life story. Damn this job thing gets in the way of the things I really should be doing!


DJ portraits
A co-project with an English designer living here in Vilnius. He wants a series of portraits of the best DJs in Vilnius and wants me to photograph it. The project will be shot on dSLR and co-edited. I want and need to do more portraits.

The Karaite
Tomorrow I go to Trakai for the weekend for work. Trakai, 28km west of here, was the ancient capital of Lithuania. In the 14th century the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas brought members of the Karaite community back to work as his personal bodyguards as well as the guards of Trakai itself. Vytautas (Polish, Witold) brought them from the Crimea where he’d been fighting the Golden Horde, but Karaite history goes back further than that. They originate from Mesopotamia, were originally Jews (some say the lost tribe) and they split in two several hundred years ago. What little there remains of the Karaite community in the world still adhere to their Old Testament beliefs. The Lithuanian Karaite on the other hand (of which there are around only 300 left) acknowledge both Jesus and Mohamed and are a strange bunch indeed. I recently met one of them, a restaurant owner, and he’s agreed to be photographed. Wouldn’t it be great to make a record of the entire community? I can follow this up next week when I return.

In short then, plenty of ideas but not much photography. I feel ashamed. There’s only about 10 minutes of fucking daylight here in the winter anyway. It’s going to snow all weekend. I’ll be taking lots of photographs.

Oh, and I got the page proofs back from the book we’re doing about Albania, complete with my photographs. They look good.

Ignore this post

Find more photos like this on mapjd08online

Borders

Lost again

I promised everyone on this course months and months and months ago that I’d introduce them to some Soviet-era Lithuanian documentary photographers. It’s taken forever to do, not least because the books that I had on the subject vanished, and to be honest I really couldn’t remember any of the photographers’ names. Today I saw a poster advertising a photographic exhibition in the Vilnius Picture Gallery. I liked the look if the poster, so I went. The show runs until December 18, and features the work of two Lithuanian photographers, Antanas Sutkus, who was born in 1939 and who’s generally considered to be the greatest Lithuanian photographer alive or otherwise, Ugnius Gelguda, the younger of the two who despite having the more interesting name failed to interest me at all. Antanas Sutkus on the other hand, whose work hangs permanently all over the world including in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, studied journalism under the Soviets in the late 1950s, a course that at the time took six years to complete. He specialised in photography, and it’s to him that we owe a hug debt. His philosophy goes deeper than simply recording he people of a particular time, but this is what he’s done like no other. He’s been likened to Cartier-Bresson, and you can see the similarities in their work, but he really is much more besides. I’m excited because I haven’t been inspired for so long. As eagle-eyed readers of this blog will already know, next year is the 1,000th anniversary of the first written mention of Lithuania and as such is a big year, a year I’m very keen to collect in photographs, even if it means becoming a tramp for nine months. I’m waffling as usual. Sutkus’ pictures are all black and white, and for the first time in I can’t remember how long I was inspired to work in the medium. I’m still desperately trying to kick-start the Vilnius Borders project, but am absolutely at a loss. Today I spent spare moments in the street and on public transport trying to capture the natural beauty of the people around me with my James Bond cameraphone, but really couldn’t get inside the work. I’m like a ship without a rudder, fuelled on too many ideas and heading for a philosophical iceberg. Among Sutkus’ photographs on show were several taken of children, who he has a natural affinity with, which he also explains most eloquently. One of his most famous photographs is of a tight(ish) head shot of a young Pioneer, which although is worthy of much plaudits doesn’t do half as much for me as the photograph in the show on the opposite wall (above) of a boy of more or less the same age as the Pioneer, who just so happens to also be a pioneer, but who is blind. The emotions locked up inside that photograph brought a lump to my throat. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about photographic young people recently as the project I believe I’ve mentioned before, of the portraits of the Lithuanian DJs, is slowly moving forwards. My partner in crime, another Englishman stuck here in Vilnius and enjoying every minute of it, commissioned the work from me as a fan, and we’re now working on how to present it. I’ll almost certainly shoot everything on the dSLR, and we’ll almost certainly present them as a series of cards (I can’t keep away from them), in this instance in the style of Top Trumps. The idea is to do a series and ‘release’ them one at a time in clubs in Vilnius. Fans can them collect, swap them etc in the style of the original. Mark, the gentleman I’m working with on the project, wants to add some text, something along the lines of a short biography and marks out of 10 for things like Originality and Mixing. I’ll leave that up to him. The Top Trumps idea came from brainstorming, which in turn came from my own musings into what the hell it is I’m doing with a camera in the first place. I recently noticed a similarity between my mobile phone photography and 16th-century Flemish tapestries. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting myself in the same league (they were the best in the world in the time and highly sought after by the richest people), I just see a similarity between the Nokia noise, especially in low light, and the weave of a tapestry. This got me thinking about all sorts of other related (pre-photographic) art forms including miniature portraits, which I’m a fan of but know almost nothing about. I hate my mobile phone this week and have started calling it Nancy. It plays up all the time, failing to capture the image when I want it and producing the most ridiculous exposures. I thought this was why I liked it, but today I have my doubts. I know that intense periods of work with it produce beautiful results, but the style of working, which essentially leaves me isolated from the subjects, feels like a depressing one at the moment. Weeks and weeks ago I bought a pad of huge sheets of paper with the idea of plotting thoughts, maps etc on them to help move the Borders project along. I really do need to do this. We go to the printers next Wednesday too, so I’m really distracted, especially as I haven’t worked on this particular in this particular office for five years. Blah blah blah, Dainius, my first Mobile Nation guinea pig, split up with his girlfriend last week and my first reaction was to get him to take pictures. What a strange world we live in. He’s just as I write this finishing (at least he says he’s finishing) the questionnaire I sent him. Armed with this we can move the project to the next level. Have I written enough? Probably (almost 1,000 words). But did I say anything?

Coincidences and side projects

As usual I’ve been thinking about completely changing the Borders project again. Over the last few days I’ve noticed that well over half of the photographs I take in Vilnius that ever get to see the light of day (ie. that get posted on a website somewhere) are taken at Kalvarijų Turgus (Kalvarijai Market). I’m still toying with the idea of moving the whole photographic show here, and will report back on the subject shortly. In the mean time, I just wanted to put this down on the subject. Proof once again if ever it was needed again that research is king. In 2002 I wrote about all of the different markets in Vilnius, including Kalvarijų Turgus. As luck would have it, I still have a copy of what I wrote, and using that as a starting point I was soon on a bizarre rollercoaster ride. During the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Kalvarijų Turgus was named Dzeržinskio Turgus after the Belarusian-born Polish Jew, Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926), who went to school in Vilnius and who’s best remembered as being the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka. Lenin idolised Dzerzhinsky and considered him a true revolutionary hero. As such, all manner of things got named in his honour including a commune in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which in 1932 started an innovative programme using young homeless people to produce a replica of our old friend the Leica, the FED (as in Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky). I became particular interested in Kalvarijų Turgus when I discovered that the back section of it features an impromptu set of stalls selling second-hand goods including the occasional Soviet-era camera. I thought this was really interesting and because I’d like to shoot film again I’ve come up with an idea for shooting a series of portraits of market stallholders. What would be perfect would be portraits of stallholders who once had a run-in with what the Cheka eventually became, the KGB. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

On a different note I’ve been approached by an English friend living in Vilnius who wants me to work with him on a project about Vilnius DJs. Part of the Vilnius City of Culture 2009 thing (see earlier posts), we’re currently talking about how to do it. I’m keen to use the Nokia, which I’ve been busy developing a philosophy for. Small is beautiful. Today I’ve been reading about miniature portrait painting, of whom the Flemish during the 16th century were arguably the best. My dad’s family came to England from that part of the world during the same century. More coincidences. Anyway, a formal project with a mobile phone is a challenge. Watch this space.

Concrete

Further to my mission as Vilnius’ unofficial cultural and historical flaneur, today I explored a couple of other sights in the city to help (hopefully) bring about more concrete ideas about the Borders project. In fact, concrete was the very word today. Vilnius’ magnificent (or is it grotesque?) and crumbling Palace of Concerts and Sports (Koncertų ir Sporto Rūmai) is an extraordinary piece of Soviet Brutalist architecture, and a particularly poignant symbol of Lithuanian dominance of the region and its attempts at destroying everything racially different that went before it. Built in 1971, the Palace of Concerts and Sports occupies a large section of the city’s former Jewish Cemetery (see previous posts for more on the subject), which opened way back in 1487 and was closed some time in the middle of the 19th century, about 100 years before it was desecrated in the name of Socialism. The building also holds the honour of being the venue for the infamous Sąjūdis Conference, when the Lithuanian version of Solidarity among other things reintroduced the non-Soviet Lithuanian flag and gave the Cathedral back to the Roman Catholic Church. Interestingly, especially as the event was exactly 20 years ago (Sąjūdis I should mention were one of the major forces in helping destroy the USSR), no monument stands to mark the event. I did notice however that a new(ish) monument to the Jewish cemetery has been placed outside. Further along the Neris river to the northeast is the site of the soon-to-open Tuskulėnų Rimties Parkas (Tuskulėnai Peace Park)built on the grounds of the 19th-century Tuskulėnų Dvaras (Tuskulėnai Manor) which was taken over by the KGB at the end of WWII and in whose grounds the bodies of 766 Lithuanian victims of the Soviets were found a few years ago. The site is being turned into yet another symbol of Lithuanian suffering at the hands of the Soviets, which, especially when you remember that the Lithuanians and Soviets made a deal over Vilnius in 1944 that effectively cleansed the city of its majority Polish population (among them the photographer Jan Bułhak - see earlier post), does look rather stupid. It’s precisely this ridiculous version of Lithuanian history that’s inspiring me to work on a project that addresses something a little more along the lines of the truth. Anyway, I’m not here to hold a grudge or to get too involved emotionally, I’m merely interested in how the city really grew. I’m starting to see the project as it’s going to be. More of that later.

The flaneur

Yesterday I went and had a look at the kenesa in Vilnius, one of (allegedly) only three surviving active ones left on the planet. A kenesa is the religious building of the karaite, a peculiar sect of Judaism who were believed to have broken away from Rabbinic Judaism in the mists of time in Baghdad. The karaite were bought to Lithuania by the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas (Polish, Witold, 1350-1430) as bodyguards and who still remain in small numbers, notably in the old Lithuanian capital at Trakai (Polish, Troki). Resplendent in their pointy boots and Oriental attire, the karaite represent much that has more or less vanished (or been removed) from the cultural makeup of Lithuania. They’re mentioned in the City of Strangers book, briefly, as are the Tartars, who once had a large community in Vilnius in what’s now known as the Lukiškės area of the city. Incidentally, this explains the Islamic graves I found in Vilnius (see earlier post). The book is doing an extraordinary job at recreating the recent past of this city, and is both helping and muddying my quest. The book is really a history of the city as told by outsiders who visited over the centuries, some of them famous authors, others more humble visitors. I’ve just been reading about Paul Otto Heinrich Fechter (1880-1958), a German submarine pilot during WWI and, under the pseudonym Paul Monty the author of a guidebook to Vilnius during the German occupation of the city from 1915 to 1918. Wanderstunden in Wilna (Wandering in Vilnius) speaks volumes about the way I feel not just about Vilnius but about my own fascination with cities. I’ve called myself an urban rambler for a long time, and I suppose it’s this obsession (or partly this obsession) that drove me into my current line of business. Paul Monty’s book is written for occupying German soldiers, and appeals directly to the flaneur, which is another word for urban rambler I suppose. Anyway, get from the book:

In this world, the right to conquer foreign cities in a privilege reserved only to a few mighty rulers and military leaders, but every traveller can successfully master unknown cities if he perfects the art of wandering. If the traveller is a clever strategist, he will certainly consult various maps and chronicles before he ventures into a strange town. If the traveller is an artist - and wandering is the freest form of art - he will approach the city from a completely different perspective. Without any hesitation, the urban wanderer will let fresh air guide him through the unfamiliar streets of the far-flung city. This form of travelling has the potential of breaking every kind of fortification. Fortunately for the traveller, our good old Wilna is blessed with a perpetual breeze, creating perfect conditions for endless roaming through its streets and squares.

It’s almost as if this was written for me.

Thinking

Border expansion

Slowly ploughing through the City of Strangers book, which despite containing a number of minor factual errors is the best thing I ever read about Vilnius. Consequently, and for reasons I’ll go into later, I’m now thinking about spreading the ‘borders’ of the project to outside the confines of the old city walls, including the whole of Vilnius as the subject. I need to think about this in more detail, but so far it makes sense. I really like the way my ideas chop and change. Anyway, today I briefly the Dawn Gate (Aušros Vartai), the single remaining gate of the five originally built into the city walls at the start of the 16th century. It contains a small chapel with a likeness of the Virgin Mary inside and is considered to have magical powers. Almost everybody who walks through the gates will glance up at the Madonna (turning round first if they’re walking into Old Town) and cross themselves. Some will go on their knees, and some will stay down for a long time. I took a few snaps (above) to get some ideas about how I could do a postcard about it, and am still thinking. Whatever, it’s one of the most important places in the city, regardless of one’s opinion about religion. I then took a number of bus journeys (above) in a fruitless attempt to find a jar of peanut butter. It seems there’s none left in the country. I like the people I find on buses and in the markets. Visually I believe the city deserves more than just what I can achieve in Old Town. Time to start talking to people about this in more detail. I’m starting to drown in my thoughts.

This is great!

Over the page in the Prologue (see previous post) and I’m introduced to the photographer Jan Bułhak (1876-1950), of whom I’ve never heard of until just now. In short he’s a famous Polish photographer, but as you start to look at his life you discover that he was born in a part of Russia that’s now Belarus and spent a large part of his life in Vilnius, or Wilno as it was known at the time, having recently changed hands from the Russia, via the German occupation of the city during WWI, to Poland.

Bułhak also wrote. Get this.

True Wilno remains closed and silent to snobs. Is it worth it to reveal your real treasures to souvenir-hunting vandals and ignorant blockheads? The city speaks softly of simple and noble things, and does not open up for everyone.

Beer!

City of Strangers

The quest for the centre always starts with the demarcation of the peripheries, for no middle point can be found without first identifying and then measuring the margins. Borders uphold the centre, they give it a sense of gravity, keep it alive.

From the Prologue of VILNIUS: City of Strangers (2008, Baltas Lankos, Vilnius), by the Lithuanian-Canadian academic Laimonas Briedas, which I’m reviewing for work purposes and will also be delving into in depth for the Borders research. In the words of my friend Dovid Katz, who contributed to the blub on the back, ‘At long last, a book that does not seek to impose a politically correct, ultranationalistic, retrospective ‘Vilnius’ on the many centuries of Vilna, Vilne and Wilno.’

My sentiments exactly, as I hope my blog posts on the Borders theme over the previous few weeks bear witness. At last I can feel some momentum.


Now for some beer.