Social adaptation of abstract photography in soviet Lithuania:

Abstract

The article examines a small part of work by the Lithuanian photographer Zinas Kazenas abstract creations executed in the 60s-80s. It's reviewed from two points. First is concerned with the context of Soviet artistic and ideological situation, where formalistic expression was ignored. Second - the lack of integrated creative practices which unifying the separate areas of creativity. Z.Kazenas' abstractions compositions printed and re-printed using analogical photography technique based on hand-molded negative using different substances on transparent material (background). In the history of Lithuanian Soviet poster the author is known as the first one who used abstract compositions in acfield. While representing M. Gorbachev's "perestroika" professed political loyalty toward the freedom of self expression, Z. Kazenas was able to present his photo abstractions in the format of solo shows in various exhibition spaces in USA. That opened the official channels in the last decade of the 20th century to organize one man shows in Europe. Assessing in the context of the world's experimental photography, work by Zinas Kazenas continues in technological sense, non camera photography experiments of the in-between-wars period of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Cristian Shadow, Alvin Langdon Coburn and others. After the WWII those experiments were transformed into the formal aesthetic searches, realized in the exhibitions and sdesigns of Heins Hajek Halke, Gyorgy Kepes, Lotte Jacobi and others. In the 7th decade, after his experiments in clich verre style started, Z.Kazenas is on the same road as the modern expressionists, such as, for example, Henry Holms Smith, who, while invoking the potentialities of the color photography and technological illusions start to question theories of reality and reflections.