An Elder of Lithuanian Photography
A new exhibition at the MO Museum, a modern art museum in Vilnius, is featuring an interesting collection of the work of Irena Giedraitienė. Born in 1935 in Panevėžys, she was an engineer with a passion for photography, which she began nurturing in 1955. She first participated in exhibitions in 1966, and went on to win recognition during the Soviet era which was not particularly generous to women photographers. A member of the Lithuanian Photographers Assocation as of 1970, she became an honorary member in 2014. In 1975 she won the Golden Eye World Press Photo award for her photograph “Wedding“.
Giedraitienė’s work focuses on expressions of human experience, personality and human relations. She has taken part in more than 50 solo shows, 40 groups shows and over 90 exhibitions abroad. Photographs selected from her extensive archive depicts the state of women workers in Soviet Lithuania, although both women and men in various professions have been her subjects.
Her work is featured in the collections of local and international photography museums, such as the Photography Museum in Šiauliai Lithuania, the International Museum of Photography in Catalonia, Spain, the French Museum of Photography in Bievres, France, and the International Centre of Photography in New York.
Her work from the Wedding series and images from the 1956 Spartakiad of Nations in Moscow are featured in the new exhibition at the MOMuseum, called Celebrate for Change (visit: https://mo.lt/en/).
For visitors unfamiliar with this museum located on Pylimo g. in Vilnius, it was a personal initiative of Lithuanian scientists and philanthropists Danguolė and Viktoras Butkus, and functioned as an art museum without walls for close to ten years. The collection of 5000 modern and contemporary pieces contains major Lithuanian artworks from the 1960s to this day.
News from LRT.lt, europeanprospects.org and mo.lt
