2025 09 03 – 28 at Photography Gallery (Vasario 16-osios st. 11)

Opening September 3, 5 p.m.

The portrait series Connection, which Meškauskas has been developing since 2017, explores the couple as a single unit—not two separate individuals, but something intangible that exists between them. The artist seeks to capture not only the external image, but also closeness, vibration, tension, silence, tenderness—things that the viewer may sense, but cannot always name.

All portraits are created using the wet plate collodion process on 25 × 25 cm metal plates—a slow, temperamental, imperfect technology dating back to the early days of photography. The resulting image is a thin layer of pure silver on a black background. Each exposure takes 10–15 seconds, revealing not only facial features but also the unspoken relationship between the subjects.

Over the eight years of this project, some couples have changed—married, separated, grown older. The series thus acquires a temporal dimension: when viewed in retrospect, one may even discern prophetic signs in the portraits. Many of the sitters are recognizable figures from the worlds of music, theatre, cinema, and culture—creative companions of the artist, whose connection with Meškauskas enabled a deeper portrayal than surface alone.

Mindaugas Meškauskas (b. 1971) is an award-winning Lithuanian TV director and scriptwriter, and a member of the Lithuanian Photographers Association. He has produced some of the biggest shiny-floor and music shows in Lithuania – X Factor, Lithuania’s Got Talent, the M.A.M.A. Awards – as well as cultural documentaries and reality shows.

As a photographer, Meškauskas has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group art projects in Vilnius, Prague, London, and Milan. His wet plate collodion portraits have been featured in Seities Magazine, The Collodion Book, various Lithuanian publications, and used as album covers.

Meškauskas’s works have been exhibited in galleries across Lithuania. His documentary films A Nineteenth-century Photographer’s Legacy, about Juozapas Čechavičius (Józef Czechowicz), and The Archives Detective, which follows the remarkable rediscovery of Antanas Ingelevičius, have drawn special attention and acclaim from the cultural community.

The artist works exclusively with historical, analog photographic processes.