VILNIUS — Cell phone cameras are not usually used for artistic photography.
Designed for quick shots of friends, their capabilities are primitive, so the photos usually end up blurry and very low-resolution. Most professional photographers prefer more advanced equipment.
But Sco, as he likes to be called, isn’t the usual documentary photographer, as his upcoming exhibition “Daily Life Revisited” attests. Sco, an Englishman who has lived on and off in Lithuania for the last eight years and is currently the editor of Vilnius In Your Pocket, shows a side of the country that’s truly “neregėta” (unseen) by foreigners. Most of the country is not as chic and flashy as Vilnius’ Old Town and financial district — in fact, those places seem alien to how most Lithuanians live their lives.
Inspired by veteran Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus’ extraordinary “Daily Life Archives” project, Sco collected impromptu photos of people on the street with his cell phone camera. Populated by senior citizens, bums, drunks, peddlers, imbibers at bus stops and others, the images provoke a wide range of emotions and interpretations. As much a work of journalism as art, the subjects were rarely aware that they’re photographed so Sco was able to record the situation without inserting himself into it.
“You can get intimacy with phones that is absolutely impossible with other cameras,” Sco told Baltic Reports. “Every photographer’s dream is to be invisible; that’s what mobile phones allow you to be.”
Just one example of the images at the "Daily Life Revisited" photo exposition, free to attend all week in Vilnius. Photo by Sco.
When asked if the photos could be considered exploitative, Sco said he has no such motivation and this work is far from that.
“There’s a woman eating out of a dumpster,” Sco said. “She was conscious of it and just kept eating.”
Given the nature of the photos and partly in reaction against the usual blow-up style of photo expositions, all of the images at the gallery will be 18 x 13 cm.
“There’s a big thing with documentary photographers where photos are getting bigger and bigger and it’s losing the personal touch,” Sco asserted.
Sco is also offering a free Nokia 2700 Classic mobile phone to whoever attends the gallery and sends him the best text message in response to it. Find out his phone number at the exposition.
The free exhibition runs for one week starting Monday until Sunday. It is open Monday through Friday from 2-8 p.m. and Saturday through Sunday from 12-6 p.m. inside an empty shoe shop in the basement floor of Iki Minskas at Žirmūnų 2, a location that befits the exposition being in the middle of a Soviet-era apartment block district, the kind of housing most Lithuanians live in.
This is Sco’s first photo exposition. He said he’s not sure what his future plans in photography are.
