People of my Town

People of my Town is a series of forty small sized colour photographic portraits of people from Varena. Their professions seem antiquated, strange and curious: baker, beekeeper and poet. The artist relates, "In Lithuania I wanted to photograph one of the train conductors dressed in a military looking uniform. At first she was not willing to leave the station in her uniform. When I was able to convince her to come with me to the wall where I planned to make the series she became nervous and told me how forbidden it was to be photographed in the uniform. Happily after a long discussion, she finally agreed to be photographed".

All the portraits are taken in the open air before the same white wall on a carpet of grass and weed. One or two objects symbolise the subject's activity. At the same time, they seem like attributes and are reminiscent of painted portraits of the 15th century. But even in the connection between the people and their profession, there is an association with August Sander who photographed in 1930s Germany.

About Ramune Pigagaite

Ramune Pigagaite was born in Varena, a small town in Lithuania. She has been living in Germany since 1992 where she studied Photography in Mainz. The relationship to her native country has not been broken and her most important work has been realised there: Villagers 1997, Morte 1999, Portraits of Things 2000, People of my Town 2000.