The context of the paradoxical discrepancy between the optimistic picture of Soviet reality constructed in official photographs and the completely different and often tragicomic reality in the everyday life was the locus where Lithuanian photography came into being in the 1960s. Art played an important part in forming the image and ideology of the state. Unfortunately, not all these photographs received the government’s approval at the time. Photographers struggled silently to express themselves and could only show some of their works publicly while hiding others.
A strong relationship with the tradition of documentary photography determined the nature of photography of the time. The principles of humanistic photography did not fundamentally contradict the provisions of social realism. Consequently, this direction acquired local peculiarities and interpretations in the work of individual artists based on the influence of the local ideological environment, then entrenched itself and became the foundation of Lithuanian photography.
It is easy to identify with the people depicted in these artworks – they are imperfect, living imperfectly, but have unique personalities. The photographs from this period contain both realities: the human being as a member of society, albeit imposed, and the human being as individuals, containing hundreds, thousands, millions of unique particles that make up their own personal self.