13th International Festival of Art Photography KAUNAS PHOTO, with partners from various European countries, launches the project “Flâneur – New Urbanistic Narratives”, which is co-financed by the “Creative Europe” programme. In the programme of this year’s festival, they emphasize the relations between the culture of the street, public places and photography. In 2015 –2016, the festival is trying to create new iconography of Kaunas and to visualize new urbanistic narratives. In this case, four foreign photographers has been invited to Kaunas, Sergiy Lebedynskyy (Ukraine & Germany), Henrik Duncker (Finland), Mariusz Forecki (Poland) and representatives of “The Caravan Gallery“ Chris Teasdale and Jan Williams (The United Kingdom), who participated in the project “Flâneur – New Urbanistic Narratives”. During they time in Lithuania, photographers prepared the images of dynamic and constantly changing Savanoriai Avenue as an arterial road of Kaunas. These images are displayed in Rotušė square. This exhibition is the final accent of the festival’s KAUNAS PHOTO 2016 programme of exhibitions, lectures, creative workshop and many more events.
The creative project of Savanoriai Avenue started back in 2009, during KAUNAS PHOTO festival, when Lithuanian American Darius Kuzmickas was invited to create the series of works “Camera Obscura. Savanoriai”. It united various interiors, street and panoramic images which have been captured from buildings of the longest street in Kaunas. The project “Savanoriai” is continued again in the festival programme of 2016.
KAUNAS PHOTO is the oldest annual festival of art photography in the Baltic States, which started in 2004 as “Kaunas Photography Days”. The festival takes place in Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania, every September. In the world context of art photography festivals, KAUNAS PHOTO is recognizing as a festival of rising talents which contains some big ideas where they were ‘born’. “PhotoWorld” magazine, published in China, named KAUNAS PHOTO 2016 as the crossroad of contemporary photography culture in Europe.
The most popular photography event in Lithuania every year attracts thousands of viewers and contains many events; presents and curates foreign and Lithuanian exhibitions in galleries, museums and outdoor spaces, publishes photography books, organizes lectures of artists, nights of photography reviews, portfolio reviews, trainings. As well as, the yearly competition of “Kaunas Photo Star” is organized in folioPORT.eu platform, where photographers can give reviews for portfolios and in this way they are introduced with photographers from all over the world.
KAUNAS PHOTO presents exhibitions and events not only in Kaunas, but also in other Lithuanian and foreign countries cities. Since 2005 the festival has held exhibitions of Lithuanian photographers’ artworks in Finland (“Blacklight”, Tampere), Poland (Lodz, Poznan), Italy (“FotoGrafia”, photography festival in Rome), France (Vannes Sea Photography festival “Le festival Photo de mer”, Beauvais photography festival, Cannes festival), China (Pingyao and Lishui festivals), Australia (“Head On”), New Zealand (Oakland Photography Festival) and else.
The main supporters of KAUNAS PHOTO festival – The Lithuanian Council for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and Kaunas City Municipality. The European project “Flâneur – New Urbanistic Narratives” is co-financed by the European Commission’s framework programme “Creative Europe”.
The festival cooperates with the Federation of European Photographers and is a member of worldwide organization “Festivals of Light”.
KAUNAS PHOTO is organized by VšĮ “Šviesos Raštas“. The festival is led by Mindaugas Kavaliauskas.