Lithuania 1,000

The year 2009 is important for Lithuania for three main reasons.

Historically, the country will be 1,000 years old.

Culturally, the capital, Vilnius, will become one of the European Capitals of Culture along with Linz in Austria.

Ethnically, the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) will close, causing further problems for the nearby town of Visaginas, inhabited by ethnic Russians moved to Lithuania when the INPP was built during Soviet times.

The year 2009 is also the 21st anniversary of the founding of Sąjūdis, the group of Lithuanian artists and intellectuals who helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It’s also the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII, during which time Lithuania lost an estimated 92% of its Jewish population, the highest loss of any country during the Holocaust.

The year 2009 also happens to be the year during which I produce my main body of work for my master’s degree in documentary photography at the London College of Communication. As somebody who lived in Lithuania for seven years, who has written books about the country and who speaks the language, it seems quite obvious to me that I should be producing it in Lithuania.

Watch this space.

A small but diverse selection of 12 of my mobile phone photographs taken in Lithuania can be found here.

mrscomophotography.co.uk

The first phase of the website is now up and running. Note that this isn’t my generic website, but one just for the two large mobile phone projects I’m interested in pursuing. Getting anything like the kind of backing I need for the Cuba project will require way too much of my time and energy, so I’m just trying to get airlines interested at the moment. If I can get a flight then maybe the rest will follow. If nothing happens then it’s their loss (the people who don’t want to support the project), not mine. The exceedingly lacklustre pdf document to support the project reflects my current state of not being bothered about putting energy into the work. The Lithuania project on the other hand is hot to trot. For more, look at the site and download the pdf. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the site I’ve put together is that the whole thing cost me £12. For that (the price of two packets of cigarettes in England) I get my own domain name plus hosting plus email plus SQL etc (if I want it), plus dedicated web-photo software for 12 months. It might not be the right choice for a serious business website, but is excellent for promoting projects. I’m sitting writing this in my dad’s front room. In front of me on the table are several scrapbooks and photo albums which represent my grandfather’s life. Tomorrow I start scanning and reading. Once that’s out the way, and I’ve managed to catch up with friends I still haven’t seen, I’m off to Lithuania to start raising interest in the large project. A larger version of the picture at the top of this post can be viewed here.

Beach

Bloody fabulous. I’ve been slowly developing my historical projects including registering with a local community website for the town I grew up in, Newhaven. Attempting to tie different projects together, I posted a picture to the community site featuring a very young, pre-school me on Newhaven’s sandy beach. It turns out the beach in question, a place that has a fond place in ever Newhaven resident’s heart, was recently closed to the public by its snivelling capitalist owners, Newhaven Port and Properties. Newhaven Town Council, understandably irate at the closure, has retaliated by looking for a loophole to get the beach open again. It appears they found one, and are now in the process of getting Village Green status for the beach. They can achieve this if they can prove that the beach has been used for sports and pastimes such as walking, kite flying, playing and picnicking for at least 20 years, and are asking residents to provide photographic evidence. What a shame I’m not going to be around to watch events unfold.

Travel

Ignore this post

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Mobile phone projects

Seems to me that the best way to start looking for sponsorship for the two large mobile phone projects I want to do is to build a website. The basic site is up and can be seen here. all comments and suggestions welcome. The actual pdf proposals will be written later in the week. If anybody has any kind of connection whatsover with any of the major mobile phone manufacturers I'd be really interested to hear from you.

Interesting

Interesting